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FROM A PALESTINIAN IN GAZA, THANK YOU SOUTH AFRICA!
DISPLAY UNTIL 4/30/2024
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Palestinian a families gather at an Anera community kitchen in n a displaced persons camp in Rafah, Gaza. Ourr Gaza staff supportss these communityrun kitchen e s in Rafah, h Khan Younis, s and Gazaa’s middle arrea, providing them with w ingredients, cooking supplies, and operatio onal gear delivered by humanitaarian aid trucks organ nized by Anera.
THEY NE EED YOUR SUPPORT R IN 20 2 24
anera.org/ g don d ate
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TELLING THE TRUTH SINCE 1982
On Middle East Affairs Volume XLIII, No. 2
March/April 2024
INTERPRETING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR NORTH AMERICANS ✮ INTERPRETING NORTH AMERICA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
THE U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE
8 12
Solidarity During a Time of Genocide: Why Gaza Matters—Ida Audeh
South Africa’s Landmark Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice—Three Views —Haidar Eid, Amjad Iraqi, Triti Parsi
18 20
22 24 27
The South Africans Exceed Expecations —Ian Williams
34
Al-Shuja’iyya Was a Beloved Neighborhood: Now Only Memories Remain—Shahd Safi
40
In Memoriam: Dr. Refaat Alareer: Poet, Professor and Palestinian Voice—Eman Alhaj Ali Israel’s War Erases Gaza’s Religious and Cultural Heritage—Maha Hussaini “We Will Come to You in a Roaring Flood”: The Untold Background of the Oct. 7 Attacks —Ramzy Baroud Attacks on Campus Free Speech—Two Views —Bruce Fein, Dale Sprusansky Congress Doubles Down on Familiar Targets —Julia Pitner
SPECIAL REPORTS
26 30 32 42
The Gaza I Loved Will Never Be the Same —Gideon Levy
Retaliation? Revenge? Or Policy?—John Gee
USS Liberty Veterans Testify in the “Live Free or Die” State—Delinda C. Hanley
44 46 48
Spying for Israel: India’s Qatar Eight—Stasa Salacanin Libya: No Country for Young Men—Mustafa Fetouri Raising Awareness of Iranian Women’s Struggles —Candice Bodnaruk
Biden “Playing with Fire” by Redesignating Yemen’s Houthis as “Terrorists” —Jillian Kestler-D’Amours and Joseph Stepansky
ON THE COVER: An Israeli battle tank is deployed to watch displaced Palestinians flee from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 30, 2024. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 30,000 displaced people in schools near Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis have no water, food or baby formula. Israel has transformed areas previously designated as safe zones into urban battlegrounds. (PHOTO BY MAHMUD HAMS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)
Other Voices The ICJ Ruling Was a Legal Victory at the Cost of Palestinian Lives, Andrew Mitrovica, www.aljazeera.com The Weapon of Nuance in Israel’s War on Gaza, Somdeep Sen, www.aljazeera.com I Could Have Been One of Those Who Broke Through the Siege on Oct. 7, Salman Abu Sitta, mondoweiss.net
Compiled by Janet McMahon
OV-1
Namibia Condemns Germany for Defending Israel in ICJ Genocide Case, Al Jazeera News, www.aljazeera.com OV-9 The Death of Neutrality?, Connor Echols, www.responsiblestatecraft.org
OV-10
Palestine to Africa: How Maps Lie—and Some Tell the Truth, Sarah Shamim, www.aljazeera.com
OV-12
Washington’s Continuing Contempt for Its Iraqi “Ally,” Ted Galen Carpenter, www.antiwar.com
OV-13
UK’s Alleged Use of Cyprus Bases To Arm Israel and Hit Yemen Draw Protests, Andrew Wilks, www.aljazeera.com
OV-14
Watch Those Houthis—They Are Pretty Tough, Eric S. Margolis, www.ericmargolis.com
OV-15
OV-3
OV-4
Gaza’s Oldest Mosque, Destroyed in an Airstrike, Was Once a Temple to Roman Gods, A Byzantine and Catholic Church, and Had Engravings of Jewish Ritual Objects, Stephennie Mulder, www.theconversation.com OV-6 Israel Wants a Palestinian Intifada in the West Bank, Gideon Levy, Haaretz
OV-7
Israel’s Dangerous Escalation In Lebanon, Abdul Rahman, www.peoplesdispatch.org
OV-8
Pentagon Admits It Has No Evidence Iran Was Behind Drone Attack That Killed 3 U.S. Troops in Jordan, Dave DeCamp, www.antiwar.com OV-16
DEPARTMENTS 5 PUBLISHERS’ PAGE 6 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 50 MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM: Islamophobic Tropes in the PalestineIsrael Discourse 51 HUMAN RIGHTS: Angela Davis on Black-Palestinian Solidarity
PHOTO BY JACK GUEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
52 WAGING PEACE: Keeping the U.S. Out of War in the Middle East 62 MIDDLE EAST BOOKS REVIEW 68 THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST—CARTOONS 69 OTHER PEOPLE’S MAIL 72 OBITUARIES 73 2023 AET CHOIR OF ANGELS 70 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
Israeli soldiers pose with a plastic skeleton found during their ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, on Dec. 27, 2023. Soldiers often amuse themselves by taking selfies (see p. 7, Other Voices, once again provided to all our readers in hopes you’ll add this vital supplement to your subscription).
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American Educational Trust “Gaza is on the Brink of Famine...”
Publishers’ Page The Bravery and Innovation...
PHOTO BY AHMAD HASABALLAH/GETTY IMAGES
Warns executive director of the Of Palestinians, especially World Peace Foundation, Alex Gazans, in the face of occupade Waal, in an article published tion, oppression and attempts in The Guardian. De Waal, at genocide never cease to author of Mass Starvation: The amaze our staff and readers. History and Future of Famine, How are they dealing with no writes: “There is no instance food, water, shelter, medical since the second world war in care, electricity, internet or which an entire population has bathrooms? Zaki Shaheen been reduced to extreme Khader (see photo) demonhunger and destitution with strates the Palestinian can-do such speed. And there’s no Zaki Shaheen Khader, 73, treats displaced Palestinians in Rafah on Jan. spirit. How will they rebuild case in which the international 9, 2024. He worked as a nurse for 50 years before retiring 10 years ago their communities? Subscriber obligation to stop it has been from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. He transformed his southern Lynn Zorn suggests a focus for so clear.” South Africa’s recent Gaza supermarket into a clinic. a future magazine issue on case against Israel at the International ideas and plans from Palestinian archivastly underestimated. Despite all the naCourt of Justice provides ample proof for tects and urban planners to build Gaza tional ad promotions and campaign conthis assertion. (See pp. 12-17.) While we back better. We’re excited to receive artitributions funded by pro-Israel PACs affilwill all be relieved if a ceasefire and Israeli cle pitches sent to authors@wrmea.org! iated with AIPAC and their ilk (see our hostage/ Palestinian prisoner deal is connext issue), 2024 voters will turn their firmed before this magazine reaches your backs on... Speaking of Building Back mailbox, De Waal warns the humanitarian Better... disaster occurring in Gaza today is... Lawmakers Who Support The renovation and expansion of Middle Genocide. East Books and More is moving very slowly. We’re still awaiting permits and While our elected officials try their best to Like a Speeding Freight Train... the repair of a building issue. That’s a ignore mass worldwide protests, testi“Even if the driver puts on the brakes, its contrast to the feverish pace we’ve mainmony from experts and international law, momentum will take it many miles before tained in the past few months supplying super-charged human rights advocates it stops. Palestinian children in Gaza will Palestinian keffiyehs, flags and other solare accomplishing some inspiring work. die, in the thousands, even if the barriers idarity items; olive oil; spices; pottery and For just one example, Washington to aid are lifted today...All modern famines hundreds of books to supporters around Report correspondents Tom Getman, are directly or indirectly man-made— the world. We’ve also been sending Steve France and Mary Neznek ushered sometimes by indifference to suffering or boxes of magazines to mosques, in two important resolutions approved by dysfunction, other times by war crimes, churches and event organizers in hopes the Episcopal Diocese of Washington at and in a few cases by genocide...” De of informing attendees and finding new their annual convention: to condition milWaal, who also is a research professor at subscribers. Unprecedented traffic is also itary aid to Israel on adherence to norms the Fletcher School of Law and Diploflowing to our websites, <www.wrmea.org> of international human rights law and solmacy at Tufts University, concludes, “And and <www.MiddleEastBooks.com>. This idarity with the international Palestinian if the U.S. and UK fail to use every possiall requires increased help from you—our Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ble lever to stop the catastrophe... subscribers and our donors. Usually our (BDS) movement. As Neznek noted, end-of-the-year Angels’ List (see p. 73) is “That is one small step but as Gideon “They will be Complicit.” two pages long. Many of you are sending Levy said [at a recent Israel lobby conferArab- and Muslim-American voters’ disyour help to vital charities like those adence co-hosted by the Washington appointment, fury and sense of betrayal vertised in the Washington Report. But Report and the Institute for Research: with President Joe Biden, his administraplease also consider digging even Middle Eastern Policy] ‘BDS is the only tion and Congress (see pp. 8-10) over deeper and helping us publish this maggame in town.’ Its success has also been their handling of the catastrophic situation azine, run and renovate our bookstore one of the best kept secrets in town.” in Gaza and the West Bank are finally getand help educate more readers. Together Israel has spent millions trying to defeat ting coverage in the also-complicit mainwe can... BDS and free speech on campus (see stream media. But the rage of students, pp. 34-38), but it’s only snowballing into Arab Americans, progressive Jews and greater support for justice. other peace-loving Americans has been Make a Difference Today! MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Executive Editor: DELINDA C. HANLEY Managing Editor: DALE SPRUSANSKY Senior Editor: IDA AUDEH Other Voices Editor: JANET McMAHON Middle East Books and More Director: NATHANIEL BAILEY Middle East Books and More Asst. Dir.: JACK MCGRATH Finance & Admin. Dir.: CHARLES R. CARTER Art Director: RALPH UWE SCHERER Founding Publisher: ANDREW I. KILLGORE
(1919-2016)
Founding Exec. Editor: RICHARD H. CURTISS
(1927-2013) Board of Directors: HENRIETTA FANNER JANET McMAHON JANE KILLGORE
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (ISSN 87554917) is published 7 times a year, monthly except Jan./Feb., March/April, June/July, Aug./Sept. and Nov./Dec. combined, at 1902 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-1707. Tel. (202) 939-6050. Subscription prices (United States and possessions): one year, $29; two years, $55; three years, $75. For Canadian and Mexican subscriptions, $35 per year; for other foreign subscriptions, $70 per year. Periodicals, postage paid at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, P.O. Box 292380, Kettering, OH 45429. Published by the American Educational Trust (AET), a nonprofit foundation incorporated in Washington, DC by retired U.S. foreign service officers to provide the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states. AET’s Foreign Policy Committee has included former U.S. ambassadors, government officials, and members of Congress, including the late Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright and Republican Sen. Charles Percy, both former chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of AET’s Board of Directors and advisory committees receive no fees for their services. The new Board of Advisers includes: Anisa Mehdi, John Gareeb, Dr. Najat Khelil Arafat, William Lightfoot, George W. Aldridge and Susan Abulhawa. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs does not take partisan domestic political positions. As a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it endorses U.N. Security Council Resolution 242’s land-for-peace formula, supported by nine successive U.S. presidents. In general, it supports Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, self-determination, and fair play. Material from the Washington Report may be reprinted without charge with attribution to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Bylined material must also be attributed to the author. This release does not apply to photographs, cartoons or reprints from other publications. Indexed by ProQuest, Gale, Ebsco Information Services, InfoTrac, LexisNexis, Public Affairs Information Service, Index to Jewish Periodicals, Ethnic News Watch, Periodica Islamica. CONTACT INFORMATION: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Editorial Office and Bookstore: 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009-9062 Phone: (202) 939-6050 • (800) 368-5788 Fax: (202) 265-4574 E-mail: wrmea@wrmea.org • bookstore@wrmea.org circulation@wrmea.org advertising@wrmea.org • donations@wrmea.org Web sites: http://www.wrmea.org http://www.middleeastbooks.com Subscriptions, sample copies and donations: P.O. Box 292380, Kettering, OH 45429 Phone: (800) 607-4410 • Fax: (937)-890-0221 Printed in the USA
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LetterstotheEditor MY EXPERIENCE AT AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL I had the privilege of serving as a trauma surgeon at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on two occasions, with the most recent visit being in October of 2019. That was during the Great March of Return, when young Palestinian men went to the separation fence between Gaza and Israel every Friday to demonstrate. They were completely unarmed and were at least 100 yards from the Israeli snipers who were ensconced behind a protective berm. The young Palestinians waved the Palestinian flag and chanted patriotic slogans, but posed no threat to the soldiers. They were nevertheless shot by the Israeli soldiers, who were basically using human beings for target practice. The cowardice and depravity of the Israeli army had to be seen to be believed. When I was there, 2,000 young Palestinian men were on a waiting list to have their lower extremities reconstructed after they had been shattered by Israeli bullets. One cannot visit Gaza without being appalled by the dire situation there. Gaza has been under siege for the past 16 years, which has destroyed the economy and plunged the enclave into poverty and despair. The Western world, and especially the United States, has chosen to look the other way and allow this crime against humanity to continue. Successive American administrations, from George W. Bush through Joseph Biden, have ignored the immense suffering that led up to the horrific crimes of Oct. 7— and the infinitely more horrific crimes inflicted upon Gaza by Israel over the past several months with the aid of American weapons. Israel has been happy with America’s non-involvement in the moribund and laughable “peace process” that has never been anything but a Kabuki dance. This has allowed Israel to steal even more Palestinian land in contravention of international law and subjugate the captive Palestinian population with impunity. President Biden is suddenly touting his interest in a two-state solution, now that
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
the inaction of his and previous administrations has rendered a meaningful twostate solution impossible. History will judge President Biden and the United States harshly for America’s complicity in the catastrophe that the Palestinian people have endured for the past 75 years. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was correct when he stated that Oct. 7 did not occur in a vacuum. Clyde Farris, M.D., West Lynn, OR
U.S. IS NOT GIVING PEACE A CHANCE Israel is using its “weapons of mass destruction” to reduce Gaza to rubble and to systematically ethnically cleanse the indigenous people of Palestine who have lived continuously on the land for centuries, well before the era of Christ. Israel’s genocidal war in the Holy Land, this war against humanity, is unconscionable. Israel has been allowed to succeed because it has been enabled by the political, financial and military arsenal of the United States government—and the American taxpayer—without any negative consequences. Undoubtedly, the U.S. is a major asset to Israel, but how has the U.S. benefited from this so-called “special relationship?” Israel is the highest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, even though its GDP is one of the highest in the world. Israel uses America as a means to its own ends and does not abide by the rules of international law. Even though the U.N. General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for a ceasefire in Gaza, the U.S. has vetoed and abstained from similar Security Council resolutions, showing Washington’s partiality for Israel and prejudice toward Palestinians. The U.S. needs to close the spigot that allows the Israeli government to continue its 75 years of occupation. Israel uses its “anti-Semitic” intimidation tool here in America to threaten anyone who criticizes the political state, especially members or candidates for Congress, or anyone in the MARCH/APRIL 2024
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media who has an opposing view. Through fear, force and greed, Israel continues to colonize, rule and absorb Palestine. Israel’s own human rights organization, B’Tselem, has chronicled Israel’s racist policies that meet the legal definition of apartheid. Israel is an apartheid state. The only solution for peace is a political one. The United Nations, with U.S. support, must issue a mandate to correct historical wrongs. Israel must return to the 1967 borders. The future of both peoples depends on it, as each state must have freedom from harm and have its own flag. Jerusalem should be an international city, with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians must have self-determination and the right of return. War is the ultimate failure. Give peace a chance, especially in the Holy Land. Judith Howard, Norwood, MA
THE TRACK RECORD OF ISRAEL’S JUDGE AT THE ICJ Israel chose retired Supreme Court President Aharon Barak to serve on the 17person International Court of Justice (ICJ) panel deciding the genocide case against Israel. (The ICJ has 15 permanent judges, and both parties to a case are allowed to appoint a judge to serve on the panel. Decisions are reached via a simple majority of the judges.) In 1982, Barak served as a member of the Israeli Supreme Court’s Kahan Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, which investigated the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in which up to 3,500 Palestinians were brutally murdered. One of the conclusions of the commission was that Israel was “indirectly responsible.” Israel was aware of the animosity between the Palestinians and the Lebanese Christian Phalangists, yet it allowed the Phalangists to enter the camps to “rid them of terrorists.” Israel did not allow terrified residents to leave, established an ongoing communication system for the Phalangists, provided flares so the murderers could find their victims, and gave them a bulldozer to bury bodies. The Israeli army, at a forward command post just outside the camp, was able to look down into the camps with binoculars. MARCH/APRIL 2024
KEEP THOSE CARDS AND LETTERS COMING! Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>. These facts point to more than indirect responsibility. There has never been justice for those in Sabra and Shatilla, but the ICJ must hold Israel fully accountable for its ongoing crimes against the people of Gaza. Ellen Siegel, Washington, DC. Ellen Siegel was a nurse in Sabra during the massacre and testified before the Kahan Commission. Israel’s Aharon Barak and Uganda’s Julia Sebutinde were the only two ICJ judges to find no “plausibility” to South Africa’s charge of genocide against the state of Israel.
given the many active opposition parties? By the way, democracy is currently an empty and negative word in the Middle East, and many other locations. By overwhelmingly supporting Israel amid what is going on in Palestine, the countries of the West who want to bring “democracy” to the Middle East and elsewhere have proven their hypocrisy. Hesham Alalusi, Hayward, CA ■
DEMOCRACY IN TÜRKIYE I read Jonathan Gorvett’s article, “Democratic Erosions in Türkiye,” in the January/ February issue, looking for evidence to substantiate the title’s claim. I did not find it. I read it again, but it was still not there. Gorvett does address the failures of the opposition parties. Is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to blame for these failures? If the united opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, could not win the May 2023 presidential election, why do you blame President Erdogan? The writer goes on, presenting the failures of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), İyi Party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (HEDEP). Where is the democratic erosion,
OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supplement available only to subscribers of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional $15 per year (see postcard insert for Washington Report subscription rates), subscribers will receive Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Back issues of both publications are available. To subscribe, telephone (800) 607-4410, e-mail <circulation@wrmea. org>, or write to P.O. Box 292380, Kettering, OH 45429.
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Special Report
Solidarity During a Time of Genocide: Why Gaza Matters By Ida Audeh South Africa filed a case in December with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which it accused Israel of genocide in its war against Gaza. Thirty-two countries signed on in support of the case. South Africa was NO SINGLE WAR ZONE prompted by its own in the world in recent history of struggle memory has triggered as against a settler-colonial much sustained outrage apartheid regime and its and protest as Israel’s genocide of Palestinians Thousands assembled at the Pasialeku Market Place in Guernica, Spain on Dec. 8, recognition of the moral in Gaza, a process put 2023, forming a human mosaic depicting the Palestinian flag and part of Pablo responsibility it had to into overdrive since Oct. Picasso’s famed anti‐war painting, “Guernica,” in support of Palestinians and stand up for a nation 7, 2023. People have condemnation of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Pasialeku was bombed by fascists and facing genocide by anNazis during the Spanish Civil War; the attack on civilians in northern Spain, a taken to the streets in stronghold of the Republican army, is considered one of the events that enabled the other settler-colonial apartheid regime. The staggering numbers, and fascists to capture the area. ICJ affirmed the “plausithey continue to voice bility” of South Africa’s charges in a Jan. 26 provisional ruling. their outrage day after day in creative and impactful ways. In the (See pp. 12-17.) United States, national demonstrations on Nov. 4, 2023 and Jan. 13, 2024 in Washington, DC drew crowds of 300,000 and 400,000 THE WORLD STANDS UP FOR GAZA respectively. On social media, ordinary people film their messages for and about Gaza—messages of grief, horror and insults directed Part of the reason for the activism is undoubtedly the absolute magat the heads of the U.S. and Israeli governments. More than four nitude of the horror, unfolding at breakneck speed. Within weeks months into the devastation of Gaza, these protests show no sign of the initial bombing, the body count was in the thousands. Chilof abating. dren seemed to be the prime target; the sheer scale of their death How does one explain what seems to be the centrality of Gaza’s prompted UNICEF to release a statement on Oct. 31 in which it fate to ordinary people around the globe, its ability to arouse and said “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s sustain passionate denunciation, to drive them into the streets in a living hell for everyone else.” The destruction of the building blocks winter weather with signs denouncing Israel and their own governof cities—its houses, main commercial area, schools, universities, ment’s complicity in genocide? hospitals, bakeries and access to power and clean water—were In this essay the focus is on the activism of U.S. civil society for clearly intended to make Gaza unliveable; the Israelis did not bother Gaza. However, two acts by governments deserve mention here. to pretend that their goal was to hit military targets. (In their view, Since November, Yemen’s de facto government has expressed anything they bombed was by definition a Hamas stronghold, inits condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza by stopping cargo cluding hospitals and U.N. refugee centers, and they bombed them ships from passing through the Red Sea to Eilat; Al Jazeera rewithout restraint.) ports that this has caused an 85 percent drop in traffic to the port, Anyone who has ever loved another person or a place has to costing Israel millions of dollars in losses. The Biden administration be moved by the scale of the human loss in Gaza and the destruchas responded by expanding the U.S. bombing campaign to tion of homes, neighborhoods and towns, which is frequently comYemen. (See pp. 42-43.) pared online to losses sustained by Dresden and Cologne during World War II. European cities were destroyed over years; in Gaza Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report. it took about two months. 8
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The fact that Israel feels so free to annihilate the Palestinian people while the world watches should terrify all of us. —Lebanese-American political activist, musician and author Peter Daou
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Israel is destroying Gaza, and the U.S. government is supporting it in the usual ways—politically, financially, diplomatically—but also by making sure that it doesn’t run out of ammunition. Two Biden administration officials resigned in protest of U.S. support for the war. Politico reported in early January 2024 that back in November, as many as “500 political appointees and staff members from 40 government agencies anonymously signed” a letter to the president urging a ceasefire, and another letter was signed by “over 500 alumni of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.” Many Americans, outraged by the knowledge that their government is aiding and abetting a genocide, have taken to Twitter/X and TikTok with video clips of themselves denouncing their government’s actions. Groups like Palestinian Youth Movement, American Muslims for Palestine, Codepink, Jewish Voice for Peace, Adalah and IfNotNow have organized White House vigils and Capitol Hill lobbying days to demand a ceasefire and other actions. Likeminded people have formed their own groups to organize neardaily actions at key targets, which have included arms manufacturer headquarters in Crystal City, VA, and the residences of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken; the actions are videotaped and posted on social media to inspire others. The scenes from Gaza are horrific, and for Palestinians the immediate future appears catastrophic. Part of the reason Palestinians have garnered solidarity from the world (in addition to revulsion that this could occur in the 21st century) has to be related to qualities of the perpetrator— whose representatives appear in the United Nations with yellow stars of David, playing the eternal victim that happens (simultaneously) to be carrying out a genocide—and to be a major arms seller. Activists who live under repressive governments are likely to be surveilled by Israeli technology, to be monitored by Israeli drones, or to have their phones hacked by Israeli spyware Pegasus. Racial justice activists in the U.S. face off with aggressive police forces trained by the Israeli army in tactics very familiar to MARCH/APRIL 2024
STAFF PHOTO JACK MCGRATH
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Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the world on Jan. 13, 2024, for a global day of action to protest the war in Gaza, as it neared the 100‐day mark, and to demand an end to Israel’s offensive and U.S. aid to Israel. The Washington, DC protest (ABOVE) drew a crowd of more than 400,000 from around the country. Palestinians in the occupied territories. People fighting for change, wherever they are, know that Israel very likely enables their oppressors. Israel demonstrates how powerful countries (attempt to) get rid of unwanted populations. No one can afford to remain silent and allow such bloody precedents.
U.S. INDULGENCE OF ISRAEL’S PATHOLOGY The U.S. bears some responsibility for Israel’s lunatic violence. The U.S. has been shielding Israel from the consequences of its illegal actions: ongoing settlement construction and ethnic cleansing, land theft, mass incarceration and surveillance, executions of Palestinians protesting Israel’s occupation, and the overall control of Palestinian mobility. Over the years, Israel concluded that international law does not apply to the Jewish state. Knowing that they would be able to escape consequences for their acts, Israeli soldiers shot at unarmed protesters during the Great March of Return with live ammunition, and to entertain themselves, they set up contests to see which sniper could hit the most Palestinian kneecaps. Medical staff, journalists and academics appear to be prime targets. Settlers now run amok in the West Bank, protected by the army. None of this would have contin-
ued for as long as it has without the U.S. acting to shield Israel from consequences. Today Palestinians throughout historic Palestine are paying the price for that indulgence. In the old city of Hebron, rabid Jewish settlers impose a lockdown on Palestinians simply because they can. Kids haven’t gone to school in months and adults haven’t been able to go to work. In October and November, farmers were prevented by armed settlers and soldiers from harvesting their olive trees. Palestinians have been shot at checkpoints and left to bleed to death because the Israelis prevent ambulances from administering first aid. The besieged Palestinian hamlets of Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills are subjected to lockdowns, recurrent raids and forced displacement by the occupation military. (See pp. 54-55.) Throughout the West Bank, towns are in active revolt. People have had enough.
MAKING THE U.S. SAFE FOR ISRAEL It is a curious thing that a country like the U.S., with such a huge imperial footprint all over the world, should bend its laws and public discourse and discipline its own citizens to favor a foreign country. The attempts of powerful U.S. elites to impose limits on public discourse violate rights most Americans consider sacred and definitive of their system.
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Israel has always been a hard sell: conceptually, the idea of a state for world Jewry never made much sense, and that would be true even had that state been established on an uninhabited island to which absolutely no other people laid claims. Because it doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny, Israel requires a lot of help—from Congress, law enforcement, the media, academics, Hollywood and other influencers— to prop it up. But as Israel becomes ever more violent and social media becomes more widespread, these familiar supports have proven to be insufficient. And so Israel’s supporters launched a frontal assault on the First Amendment, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, thereby equating opposition to Israel with hate speech that must be banned. The willingness of state legislatures to do this is puzzling, if only because the right to free speech has always been considered non-negotiable, a defining characteristic of a free society and one that Americans pride themselves on. According to the organization Combat Antisemitism Movement, 33 states have passed resolutions that equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. What this means is that U.S. taxpayers must watch (AIPAC-bought members of) Congress vote to give more than $3 billion in assistance to Israel each year and keep their mouths shut; if they question Israel’s foreign or domestic policies or object to Israel getting so much of their tax dollars despite urgent domestic social needs (for which funding is never available), they will find themselves branded as anti-Semites,
with predictable implications for their credibility and their personal reputations, not to mention their employability. Student activists with groups like Students for Justice in Palestine have found themselves branded publicly as bigots, and seniors have had job offers rescinded. The state of Virginia has an office, Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB), embedded with the state government and funded by taxpayers, whose sole function is to open up opportunities for Israeli businesses in the state. According to the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights website, VIAB diverts “state, federal and private grants, as well as demands on state-funded entities like colleges and universities to collaborate in projects designed primarily to benefit Israel” to the tune of millions of dollars each year. It isn’t wellpublicized for obvious reasons: Virginia residents might object to seeing their tax dollars spent to fatten foreign companies. Virginia is acting entirely altruistically; its residents get nothing from this office they are funding and most likely are not aware that it exists. As of 2021, about 35 states have passed bills and executive orders designed to discourage boycotts of Israel. Such laws have been successfully challenged in the courts as infringements on First Amendment rights. Can one imagine a successful anti-slavery movement, U.S. civil rights movement, or anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa without the use of boycotts to advance those causes? U.S. citizens have paid a high price for their government’s support for Israel. People around the world regard the U.S.
government as a rogue state and a hypocrite for professing ideals it doesn’t practice. In supporting Israeli colonialism in Palestine, it is an oppressor by association. Domestically, it adopts methods that are deceptive and opaque, and it bullies its own citizens to secure compliance. When Americans stand up for Gaza, they do so to affirm their own humanity as world citizens who envision a more benign world order than the prevailing one. A happy byproduct of that activism is the loosening of taboos around criticism of Israeli policies and actions. Each protest strikes a blow at the shield that had surrounded Israel and protected it from scrutiny; it affirms people’s insistence on their right to express opinions on the issues of the day, even (or perhaps especially) when those opinions differ from the government line. The impact of these grassroots efforts can be seen on the municipal level, as dozens of U.S. cities including Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Detroit and San Francisco have passed resolutions demanding a sustained ceasefire. Years from now, social historians may think of Oct. 7, 2023 as the beginning of a U.S. popular movement against oppressive and manipulative domestic forces, like AIPAC and other Israel-first organizations and individuals, which have stifled an open debate about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel and the cost of that relationship on public life. That debate has begun—on university campuses, in the media, and powerfully and insistently in the streets. In its own way, it represents a U.S. intifada that is long overdue. ■
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South Africa’s Landmark Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice
People raise flags and placards in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Jan. 10, 2024, as they celebrate a landmark “genocide” case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has long been a firm supporter of the Palestinian cause, often linking it to its own struggle against the white‐minority government, which had cooperative relations with Israel.
From a Palestinian in Gaza, Thank You South Africa! By Haidar Eid
SOUTH AFRICA has had enough of the world’s deafening silence on apartheid Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The unprecedented number of war crimes and crimes against humanity Israel committed in the besieged coastal enclave in the past three months with complete impunity has put the credibility of international law at stake and sprung South
Haidar Eid is an associate professor at al‐Aqsa University in Gaza. His recent book, Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind, is reviewed on p. 62. This article was first printed in Al Jazeera on Jan. 12, 2024, and is reprinted with their permission. 12
Africa into action. Its top legal minds compiled an 84-page document detailing evidence of these crimes and launched a landmark case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide in contravention of the 1948 Genocide Convention. This is music to Palestinian ears. No other country, Arab or Muslim, has ever dared cross this “red line” before. After all, this is Israel, the colonial West’s spoiled baby—the one project it insisted on keeping alive after the end of the era of colonialism, camouflaging it with slogans of the Enlightenment and arming it with its best weapons. Every state on Earth is undoubtedly aware of Israel’s crimes, but none dares hold it to account in fear of what its colonial patrons may do in response. Thankfully, post-apartheid South Africa eventually said “enough is enough” and took Israel to the top court of the United Nations. The nation that defeated a ruthless apartheid
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Indeed, since the beginning of this latest massacre, a wide regime and built a multiracial, democratic state in its place recrange of Israeli officials from the president and the prime minisognized how the international community’s silence is paving ter to prominent members of the government, media and civil the way for Israel’s deadly excesses, and it took an important society have clearly voiced their intent for genocide. Just last step to put an end to it. week, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who had previIndeed, charging Israel with the crime of genocide at the ICJ ously said dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip is “an opcould bring an end to Israel’s impunity, create the conditions for tion,” urged Israel to find ways that are “more painful than a much needed military embargo and leave Israel isolated on death” to force Palestinians to leave the Strip. the world stage. Even more importantly, South Africa’s case Israel’s intent to commit genocide in Gaza may be more could lead to provisional measures that include an immediate clear today than ever before, but it is in no way new. Back in ceasefire and the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza. 2004, Arnon Soffer, head of the National Defense College of These measures are urgently needed because every day peothe Israeli Offensive Forces and an adviser to then-Prime Minple are dying in their thousands in the Strip. More than 27,000 ister Ariel Sharon, had already spelled out the desired results people have already perished, and thousands more are missof Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in an interview ing under the rubble. About 70 percent of the victims of this with the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post: horror have been women and children. “When 1.5 million people live in a closed-off I happen to be both Palestinian and South Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. African and a survivor of the Gaza genocide. I’ve lost many relatives, friends, colleagues, outh Africa showed Those people will become even bigger anistudents and neighbors to Israel’s violence us that another world mals than they are today.…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terover the years. is possible: a world rible war. So if we want to remain alive, we In Gaza, I survived five attacks or, more will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every accurately, massacres by apartheid Israel where no state is day.…If we don’t kill, we will cease to from 2008 to 2023. I’ve also experienced above the law exist.…Unilateral separation doesn’t guaranfirst hand the consequences of the deadly tee ‘peace.’ It guarantees a Zionist-Jewish siege it has imposed on the strip since 2007. state with an overwhelming majority of Jews.” My entire neighborhood was flattened by air strikes in the first Now, 20 years after Soffer revealed Israel’s intention to “kill week of the ongoing genocide. And I’ve been displaced four and kill and kill” in the Strip, Gaza is truly dying. People are times since then. being killed, maimed, starved and displaced en masse before Like every other inhabitant of this coastal enclave, I lived the eyes of the world’s nations, in what tragically has become through the same dark scenario with every massacre: Israel the first globally watched genocide in history. decided to “mow the lawn,” the so-called international commuWe Palestinians will not forget the sickening cowardice of nity conveniently looked the other way and, for many long the so-called international community, which has allowed and days and nights, we faced the world’s most immoral army enabled this genocide. We will not forget how the nations of alone—an army that has hundreds of nuclear warheads and the world stood idly by as Israel’s racist leaders openly thousands of trigger-happy soldiers armed with Merkava claimed that we, the indigenous people of Palestine, are the tanks, F-16s, Apache helicopters, naval gunships and phos“Amalek”—the foe that, according to the Torah, God ordered phorous bombs. Once the massacre was over, everything rethe ancient Israelites to commit genocide against—and emturned to “normal,” and Israel continued to kill us slowly with a barked on a racist, inhuman quest to “annihilate” all of us. suffocating siege that keeps our children malnourished, water But we will never forget what South Africa did for us either. contaminated and nights dark. And in the many iterations of We will not forget how it showed us unwavering support and this deadly cycle that we lived through, at no point did we rebravely took a stand for us at the world court when even our ceive a single word of sympathy or support from the Bidens, own brothers have turned their backs on us in fear. We will alSunaks, Macrons and von der Leyens of this world. ways remember how it linked our struggle, our most basic All these massacres committed with impunity made it glarhuman rights, to global justice and reminded the international ingly obvious that apartheid Israel has the unequivocal backcommunity of our humanity. ing of the white, “liberal” West to do as it pleases with Gaza Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, committed out in the and its people. These massacres were the dress rehearsals open and with impunity, has ushered in the end of the Westernfor the genocide that is underway today. They showed Israel led, rules-based international order. By bravely standing up for that it can commit war crimes and crimes against humanity what is right and taking Israel to the ICJ, however, South Africa without receiving any sanction or condemnation from the intershowed us that another world is possible: a world where no national community. After all, no one said anything in 2008, state is above the law, most heinous crimes like genocide and 2012, 2014 and 2021, so why should it be any different now? apartheid are never accepted and the peoples of the world This is the logic that has allowed Israel’s leaders to be so stand together shoulder to shoulder against injustice. open in the past few months about their intentions to “extermiThank you, South Africa! nate” Palestinians in Gaza.
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South Africa's lawyer and legal activist Tembeka Ngcukaitobi returns to a hero’s welcome in Johannesburg, South Africa on Jan. 14, 2024, after representing his country in the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Israel’s Right to Tyranny By Amjad Iraqi IT’S HARD to overstate the symbolic power of the Jan. 11 hearing at the International Court of Justice. In a moving display of solidarity, a diverse lineup of South African, Irish and British lawyers meticulously laid out their evidence for charging Israel with the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip. The malicious statements of Israeli officials, including cabinet ministers and generals, were recited as declarations of murderous intent. Videos of mass destruction, often recorded gleefully by Israeli soldiers and which have dominated our social media feeds for months, were brought before the world’s highest court for judgment. Palestinians have long been bitterly disappointed with international law, but watching the courtroom that day, even the most cynical observers could not help but feel seen, supported, even hopeful. In the second hearing on Jan. 12, Israel’s attorneys gave a tough rebuttal to try and dismiss the claims of genocide as ludicrous. They presented examples of Israel’s coordination of
Amjad Iraqi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, currently based in Lon‐ don, is senior editor at +972 Magazine, where this article first ap‐ peared. He is also a policy member of the think tank Al‐Shabaka, and was previously an advocacy coordinator at the legal center Adalah. Reprinted with permission. 14
humanitarian aid; the army’s methods of instructing civilians to evacuate targeted areas; images showing Hamas militants’ assimilation into the urban environment; and of course, the repeated invocation of Israel’s right to defend itself under international law. The Israeli arguments were predictable, and many were easy to debunk, but they still carry significant weight. Along with the court’s proclivity for conservative interpretations of the law, the judges are acutely aware that they are presiding over what may be the most politically divisive case ever brought to The Hague, and thus may opt for a more cautioned approach. At this point, however, the ICJ’s impending decisions are secondary to the lessons that ought to be drawn from the proceedings. One key takeaway, which has yet to fully register in Western policy circles, is the vacuity of Israel’s claim of “defense” to explain the wanton devastation wrought upon the besieged Strip. Indeed, from its oral arguments in The Hague to its actions on the ground, Israel has made it abundantly clear that it is not asking the court to respect its right to self-defense. What it really wants is for the world to indulge Israel’s right to tyranny: to violently redesign its geopolitical environment, to secure its military and demographic dominance, and to do whatever it wishes to the Palestinians without criticism or consequence. This tyranny is not just reflected in the mounting death toll in Gaza, although 24,000 bodies and 7,000 others missing—an especially searing rate for a small population that is tightly in-
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tertwined by familial, communal and cultural bonds—is a grisly indicator. It is also in the terrifying fact that Gaza’s social fabric is deliberately being unraveled. Until three months ago, and despite years of de-development and siege, Palestinians in Gaza had remained relatively self-reliant, resourced and cohesive enough to care for their own as best they could. Now, over 2 million people are in the throes of a man-made famine and epidemiological disaster, generated at a speed that has been described as unprecedented in modern history. The chilling scenes of hungry Palestinians scrambling over aid trucks to grab food for their families, surrounded by thousands of others trying to do the same, are a glimpse into Israel’s mutation of Gaza from a resilient enclave into a “graveyard for children.” The biblical scale of displacement across the Strip—which has amounted to nearly three times the number of Palestinians expelled during the 1948 Nakba—is another reflection of this tyrannical force. In Orwellian fashion, the Israeli authorities have cited their distribution of leaflets, text messages and other communications as proof of their efforts to put civilians out of harm’s way. But the exodus is the point: much of northern Gaza is now open for Israel to mold as it deems fit, whether for military buffer zones or future Jewish settlements. What Israel’s lawyers touted to the ICJ as a “humanitarian” gesture became a weapon of demographic engineering, accomplishing in three months what Israel is incrementally advancing in the occupied West Bank as well. On top of all this, the methodical decimation of entire neighborhoods, hospitals, government buildings, schools, heritage sites, water networks, electricity grids and other public infrastructure is thwarting the feasibility, and perhaps even the desire, of many displaced communities to return to large parts of Gaza in the near future. The Herculean tasks of clearing the mountains of rubble, extracting bodies still trapped under the debris, and camping out in the cold with no basic supplies, are only the first daunting steps before Palestinians can even begin reconstruction— a process which no foreign government will be interested in bankrolling if another military campaign seems all but inevitable. Even if they could gather the resources, Palestinians will have to rebuild their lives under the watch of the very army that brought this ruin upon them, all while grappling with physical wounds, raw trauma and the paralyzing fear that the next apocalyptic war is just around the corner.
TOTAL SHIELDING The Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, which began with the dismantling of Gaza’s despised prison walls but ended with the horrific massacres of hundreds of Israeli civilians in their homes, has triggered a profound existential fear among Israeli Jews. This fear has manifested into a near-unanimous call for vengeance and retribution, cheered on from the Knesset to the media to the streets. But Israelis’ urge to exact tyrannical power did not suddenly arise from Oct. 7. In fact, it is deeply embedded in the state’s ideological foundations and political psyche. MARCH/APRIL 2024
As a European-borne, nationalist-cum-settler-colonial project, Zionism was essentially conceived as an engine for Jews to replicate the path of Western nations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In that context, statehood was not merely about embodying self-determination: it entailed the right to dispossess other peoples’ lands, deprive “inferior” subjects of civil liberties, and inflict monstrous violence aimed at erasing the unwanted society and its culture. (In Israel’s case, statebuilding was aided in no small part by the draconian apparatus left by its British predecessors in Palestine.) The permission to pursue belated colonialism is a fundamental bargain Israel has struck with its Western allies, who to this day see the Jewish state as a convenient remedy to “repent” for their anti-Semitic history and the crimes of the Holocaust. On the occasions Israel does face scrutiny, it simply reverts to the mantra of being “the world’s only Jewish state”—the code that reminds the West of the pact to condone Israel’s brutal behavior. From the 1948 Nakba, to its military rule since 1967, to its current onslaught in Gaza, Israel has grounded its tyranny in the same rationale: “The West had its turn—now it’s ours.” In the past, foreign governments, including the United States, still had the sense to try and curb some of Israel’s hubris. But today, those limitations have vanished. Outdoing his Republican predecessor, U.S. President Joe Biden is actively abetting Israel’s unbridled assault on Gaza, rejecting the very notion of a ceasefire and even bypassing Congress to deliver more weapons. In the early days of the war, European leaders like Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rushed to southern Israel to express their solidarity, without any mention of the thousands of Palestinians being bombed just a few kilometers away. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in keeping with Germany’s obsessive efforts to prove its absolution to the Jewish state, announced that Berlin will join the ICJ case to back Israel against the charge of genocide. The total shielding of Israel’s ruthless war has clearly struck a nerve beyond Palestine. Astounded by Germany’s planned intervention in the ICJ case, Namibian President Hage Geingob called out his country’s former colonizer for its selective memory of the atrocities it has to repent for, citing Germany’s campaign against the Herero and Namaqua peoples as “the first genocide of the 20th century,” three decades before the Holocaust. When a U.S.-led coalition launched air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen for disrupting the Red Sea’s trade routes—which the rebels declared was intended to compel an end to the Gaza assault—the hypocrisy was even starker; it seemed Washington would rather escalate a regional war than ask Israel to agree to a ceasefire. For much of the Global South, these skewed responses from Western powers are hardly an oversight; they are indicative of the victims that the latter deem worthy of being mourned and protected in the international order. As if to make that point crystal clear, President Biden marked the 100th day of the Gaza war by extending his support to the 130 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, without any mention of the
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The South African delegation poses for a photo in The Hague, Netherlands, on Jan. 11, 2024, after requesting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rule on possible acts of "genocide" in the Gaza Strip by Israel. more than 24,000 Palestinians killed, supposedly, in the name of retrieving those captives. Such dismissal of Palestinian life, and the blatant impunity it promotes, has been heard loud and clear in Israel. The fact that the bombing of Gaza has “outpaced” that of the Assad regime in Syria, Russia in Ukraine and the United States in Iraq is indicative of Israel’s ferocious power trip. “Nobody will stop us,” declared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu days after the ICJ hearings, “not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.” International principles may demand accountability for the crimes of Oct. 7, but in tolerating Gaza’s demise as punishment, Western capitals have simply signed off on Israelis’ license to continue acting like despots.
ICJ Lands Stunning Blow on Israel Over Gaza Genocide Charge By Trita Parsi THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE (ICJ) ruled against Israel on Jan. 26, 2024 and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide.
Trita Parsi is the co‐founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which first published this article. Reprinted with permission. 16
The Court imposes several injunctions against Israel and reminds Israel that its rulings are binding, according to international law. A final ruling will still take more time, but this ruling will have significant political repercussions. Here are a few thoughts. This is a devastating blow to Israel’s global standing. To put it in context, Israel has worked ferociously for the last two decades to defeat the BDS movement—Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—not because it will have a significant economic impact on Israel, but because of how it could delegitimize Israel internationally. However, the ruling of the ICJ that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide is far more devastating to Israel’s legitimacy than anything BDS could have achieved. Just as much as Israel’s political system has been increasingly—and publicly—associated with apartheid in the past few years, Israel will now be similarly associated with the charge of genocide. As a result, those countries that have supported Israel and its military campaign in Gaza, such as the U.S. under President Biden, will be associated with that charge, too. The implications for the United States are significant. First because the court does not have the ability to implement its ruling. Instead, the matter will go to the United Nations Security Council, where the Biden administration will once again face the choice of protecting Israel politically by casting a veto, and by that, further isolate the United States, or allowing the Security Council to act and pay a domestic political cost for “not standing by Israel.”
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So far, the Biden administration has refused to say if it will respect the ICJ's decision. Of course, in previous cases in front of the ICJ, such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Syria, the U.S. and Western states stressed that ICJ provisional measures are binding and must be fully implemented. The double standards of U.S. foreign policy will hit a new low if, in this case, Biden not only argues against the ICJ, but actively acts to prevent and block the implementation of its ruling. It is perhaps not surprising that senior Biden administration officials have largely ceased using the term “rules-based order” since Oct. 7. It also raises questions about how Biden’s policy of bearhugging Israel may have contributed to Israel’s conduct. Biden could have offered more measured support and pushed back hard against Israeli excesses—and by that, prevented Israel from engaging in actions that could potentially fall under the category of genocide. But he didn’t. Instead, Biden offered unconditional support combined with zero public criticism of Israel’s conduct and only limited pushback behind the scenes. A different American approach could have shaped Israel’s war efforts in a manner that arguably would not have been preliminarily ruled by the ICJ as plausibly meeting the standards of genocide. This shows that America undermines its own interest as well as that of its partners when it offers them blank checks and complete and unquestionable protection. The absence of checks and balances that such protection offers fuels reckless behavior all around.
As such, Biden’s unconditional support may have undermined Israel, in the final analysis. This ruling may also boost those arguing that all states that are party to the Genocide Convention have a positive obligation to prevent genocide. The Houthis, for instance, have justified their attacks against ships heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea, citing this positive obligation. What legal implications will the court’s ruling have as a result on the U.S. and UK’s military action against the Houthis? The implications for Europe will also be considerable. The U.S. is rather accustomed to and comfortable with setting aside international law and ignoring international institutions. Europe is not. International law and institutions play a much more central role in European security thinking. The decision will continue to split Europe. But the fact that some key EU states will reject the ICJ’s ruling will profoundly contradict and undermine Europe’s broader security paradigm. One final point: The mere existence of South Africa’s application to the ICJ appears to have moderated Israel’s war conduct. Any plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and send its residents to third countries appear to have been somewhat paused, presumably because of how such actions would boost South Africa’s application. If so, it shows that the Court, in an era where the force of international law is increasingly questioned, has had a greater impact in terms of deterring unlawful Israeli actions than anything the Biden administration has done. ■
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United Nations Report
The South Africans Exceed Expectations By Ian Williams
CARTOON BY TJEERD ROYAARD
legal channel for South Africa to bring a case since it creates a duty for states to intervene. To use the expression of a former New York City boss, the South Africans “seen their chances and took ’em.” And it was beautiful theater played out on the Hague stage. The more that Israel and its allies fulminated, the more the world was reminded that South Africa has tactfully refrained from harping about Israel’s intimate complicity in supporting and arming Apartheid—up to and including nuclear weapons. The African National Congress (ANC) founding fathers of South Africa had always been vociferous in their solidarity with the Palestinians. They remember that the states now backing Israel shielded and armed Apartheid South Africa, not to mention Rhodesia and Portuguese colonialism. The resulting overwhelming verdict was even more convincing, legally and politically, because it is not often the judges sing in harmony like this. The only dissent was the Ugandan judge whose opinion had all the stylistic flourishes of an Israeli foreign ministry law team. Judge Julia Sebutinde bought the whole U.S./Israeli leitmotif for the last few decades: Ignore the law and concentrate on “negotiations.” The judge has been disowned by her own government but is now presumably assured of a prosperous retirement. Such hypocrisy and the inability of much of the West to disambiguate Israel and the Holocaust has made the Global South suspect that the North is only kidding in its support for the rule of law internationally. At the U.N. Israel has always benefitted from actual diplomatic protection by the United States, but as Israeli massacres, settlement building, ethnic cleansing of communities and so on have become more and more flagrant, Western powers have pushed the idea that it is “thoughtcrime” to accuse the perpetrating state. That is why commentary on the Genocide Convention often credits its origins to a reflexive reaction to the Holocaust. This is a severe
Israel solemnly swears it is not committing genocide. ONLY THOSE with their head in the clouds expected the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order an immediate ceasefire. The Court goes (mostly) by law rather than moral outrage, although in this case the amazing consensus suggests that outrage did have a role, reinforced by having the eyes of the world on them (except perhaps those of the Western media). The Israelis could have learned from Donald Trump that impugning and insulting your judges is not the cleverest litigation practice. Lawyers who had worked with the ICJ were uncertain about the outcome. This implied no criticism of South Africa’s legal team, which performed brilliantly, and whose composition is a living refutation and repudiation of the country’s Apartheid past. However, observers did stress in advance the difficulty of proving genocide, as opposed to mere mass murder; hence the reluctance to call for a ceasefire. But by accepting the case and ordering provisional measures, the bench indicated that there was indeed probable cause. Despite the difficulty, the Genocide Convention had opened a
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More). 18
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injustice to Raphael Lemkin, the term’s universalist originator, whose original spur to action was the Armenian genocide in World War I. Only in the interwar period did he add anti-Semitism and other group persecutions as impetus, and it would appear that despite the horrifying price paid by his family even after the Nazis killed 49 members of his family, including his parents, he retained his universalist outlook. For many years the concept of “genocide” was constricted by an exclusive affinity with anti-Semitism because of the chilling Nazi obsessions whose mercilessness scarred collective memory. The Nazi leadership sought to eliminate all trace of Jews from memory as well as life, dialing up mere mass murder to genocide. Comparisons of massacres with the Holocaust have been considered odious by those who insist the Holocaust was a unique event; in some cases, the comparison diminishes otherwise noteworthy atrocities. However, Washington’s frantic efforts to avoid characterizing various massacres as “genocide” has prevented the potential use of the charge as a trigger for international action, which is why Israel supporters have often fought for exclusive claim to the genocide label in general, let alone the Holocaust, that excludes any comparison with Israeli behavior. The ICJ ruling has potential practical consequences, as a catalyst for initiatives for diplomatic, cultural and financial boycotts, which is why the Likud government actually fought the case and defended itself rather than staying away while preemptively denouncing the U.N.’s inherent bias and antiSemitism. In 2021, Israel’s weaselly ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, showed what the country really thinks of the U.N. system by tearing up a Human Rights Council report and throwing it in a dustbin during an address at the General Assembly. Yet he successfully sought election the next year— 2022—to the post of vice-president of the U.N. General Assembly and crowed about his success. By sending a legal team to the Hague, Israel accorded the court more respect MARCH/APRIL 2024
than did U.S. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby, who dismissed the meticulously documented South African case as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” Even before the verdict, South Africa’s litigation had scored a major blow against Israeli credibility, shattering the Holocaust shield Israel had successfully and consistently wielded. Pretoria has done so from a sense of principle, risking political and financial revenge from rich countries that share a pro-Israel bias. While it is probably true that the case does come at a convenient time to re-burnish South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa’s radical credentials and boost his flagging popular support, supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu—who starts wars rather than court cases to win elections—are hardly in a position to make odious comparisons. Cheerleading for the dwindling disbelieving “Say it ain’t so” brigade, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne hectored the his parliament, adding his voice to similar categorical protests from the U.S., Germany and Britain: “Accusing the Jewish state of genocide crosses a moral threshold. The notion of genocide cannot be exploited for political ends.” Their message could be paraphrased as “Never mind the corpses in Gaza, feel the pain of our longsuffering Israeli friends.” For most of the world, the relevant moral threshold is actually the relentless murder entailed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. In fact, the foreign minister’s fatuous statement was the culmination of 80 years of abusive Zionist political exploitation of genocide, with its preemptive invocation of the Holocaust to wrap the world’s number one scofflaw state in the cloak of victimhood. By simply bringing the case, South Africa has changed the rules. Regardless of the outcome, the case has effectively broken the “thoughtcrime” of questioning Israel’s impunity, which draws on more Orwellian tropes, like doublethink and the memory hole. The spotlight is now on those countries preaching human rights who refused to consider the evidence.
Israel’s self-absorption extends to its allies, notably Germany and its argument with Namibia. (See p. 6 in this issue’s “Other Voices.”) As Southwest Africa, it was one of the rare unalloyed victors in an ICJ case in 1966 <https://www.icjcij.org/case/ 53>. The ICJ ruled that the Apartheid regime had no legal title to the former German colony, which marked the beginning of its end. Windhoek was the first domino on the way to Pretoria. It is perhaps noteworthy that South Africa, unlike the apartheid state in the Mediterranean, actually honored the court’s decision. The facts, and the law, as carefully documented by the South African legal team, should have made the case a slam dunk against the settler state. However, the ICJ judges are tapped from legal functionaries linked to foreign ministries, not from ex-freedom fighters and activists. Despite its reflexive deference to authority, surprisingly, the bench was nearly unanimous in calling for “provisional measures” pending the full hearing on the genocide charges. One element that Western commentators underestimated is the court’s instincts for its own relevance and survival. Precisely because they are connected to their foreign ministries, the judges are aware the court’s power derives from a global legitimacy that has been attenuated with each international law case, including those in its sister International Criminal Court, that appears to give impunity to the U.S. and its ally. A failure to deliver justice for Gaza would have signaled to the world that it is time to replace the wig with the keffiyeh. Apart from further damage to Israel’s standing, Germany’s arrogance has severely damaged its own international diplomacy. The optics of attacking liberated South Africa are bad enough, but to declare total support for Israel and attack Pretoria on the anniversary of Germany’s genocide in Namibia is arrogant and insensitive. But in case anyone thought that Israel would meekly accept the court’s ruling, it hit back with its pet pack of killer poodles. It conveniently announced that it had evidence of UNRWA staff involvement in the Continued on p. 39
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Voices From Gaza
Al-Shuja‘iyya Was a Beloved Neighborhood: Now Only Memories Remain
By Shahd Safi
PHOTO COURTESY SHAHD SAFI
you’d have come across. It was a grey and white four-story building, and each apartment had a balcony overlooking a local outdoor grocery market. All day long, you’d hear the neighborhood grocers calling out to sell their product, the noise of cars coming and leaving the market, and the lovely laughter and chit-chat of students going off to school and returning home. Najwa regarded Al-Shuja‘iyya as a very socially cohesive community, a place where she felt loved and supported. “I know almost all my neighbors,” she told the Washington Report. “We visit each other from time to time. We’re more of an extended family than we are neighbors. There is a sense of respect and solidarity all around our neighborhood.” Najwa says that during the current attack, “our world crumbled, our buildings collapsed, and our loved ones were either killed or injured. We were left with memories only.” Najwa’s best friend was Salwa, 48. A kindhearted woman who loved to gather people in her home, Salwa used to invite her friends and neighbors into her house for tea and coffee. Her house was like a café where friends would hang out, says Najwa. “Salwa was my age, but she was more like a mother figure,” adds Najwa. “I used to comfortably share my worries and personal troubles with her. We used to try to figure out our problems together.” Salwa loved Najwa’s only daughter, Abrar, and would often invite the girl over for a cup of tea and some snacks. Abrar is the same age as Salwa’s oldest daughter, Najwa explains. Salwa has four sons and two daughters, and Abrar was like a third daughter to her. “Salwa was like my stepmother,” Abrar recounts. “I truly loved her. Her daughter was my best friend. We used to hang out and go shopping together. Every time she gifted her daughters, she gifted me too. She was super generous.” Salwa developed a medical problem involving her eyes, and so in 2022 she traveled to Egypt and underwent surgery, during which silicone was inserted in her eyes. The silicone caused her to lose her vision.
All that remains of Najwa’s home in Al‐Shuja‘iyya.
ISRAEL HAS DISPLACED most Gaza Strip residents to the southern city of Rafah, where the situation is dire. Access to food, water and basic necessities is extremely limited. Many Gazan families in Rafah are forced to live in tents, where they struggle with the cold and rain, especially at night. Israel’s ongoing attacks mean that everyone in Gaza has been living in fear for more than 100 miserable days. Al-Shuja‘iyya was once a vibrant and heavily populated neighborhood in the east of Gaza City, where people were energetic and always on the go. If you had visited the neighborhood prior to the ongoing genocide, Najwa’s building would be one of the first
Shahd Safi is a Gaza‐based Arabic/English translator and teacher, freelance journalist, social media coordinator, human rights advocate, as well as a writer for We Are Not Numbers (WANN). 20
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Salwa returned to Gaza in June 2023, only four months before the attack. She had been scheduled to undergo a second surgery on Nov. 4 to remove the silicone. She was told that she would regain her sight immediately after the second surgery. She never had a chance to find out. Salwa was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the same day she was scheduled for surgery. Her eldest son, Waleed, had previously convinced her to leave the family’s home and rent an apartment that he thought would be safer than theirs, because it was farther away from the Israeli border. On Nov. 4, it was bombed by Israeli warplanes. Twelve members of Salwa’s family were killed with her, including her 12year-old daughter. Waleed is now traumatized, struggling with deep depression and overwhelming guilt, and unable to overcome the shock. Nineteen-year-old Hassan is a friend of Najwa’s son Ismail. Hassan had been diagnosed with kidney failure in 2022, yet his spirits remained high. Though some of the days following the diagnosis were very painful for him, by the end of each day he had somehow managed to cheer himself up. His positive attitude was a huge inspiration to Ismail. “Whenever life hits me hard, I remember my friend Hassan,” Ismail told the Washington Report. “He is a wonderful teacher of life. When it turns dark, he thinks of himself as a ray of light. Somehow, he’d always find a reason to smile, to laugh and to sometimes dance.” But since October 2023, Hassan has been displaced twice—first to a school in Gaza and then to a tent in Deir al-Balah. Najwa told the Washington Report that for two weeks he had no dialysis sessions at all because Israel cut the electricity to Gaza. And then his health started to deteriorate. He developed high blood pressure. He struggles with food, as most products currently available in Gaza are canned, which he has been told to avoid because canned foods are very unhealthy for patients in his MARCH/APRIL 2024
condition. He eats very little—a tomato, a cucumber, maybe some potatoes and bread and olive oil. His dialysis schedule has been scaled back. The lack and sometimes total absence of water has made his situation quite dire. For the first time in his life, Hassan is experiencing severe depression. “Last time we talked, he seemed very off,” Ismail tells the Washington Report. “He was different, not the Hassan I knew. His voice was tired and he barely laughed or told a joke. It was like I was talking to a retired old man who complains about illness and poverty. It was the first time I heard him curse life, but I understood where that came from. Actually, I would have been stunned if he’d remained hopeful during such awful times…I suspect God himself has lost hope in humanity.” Ismail adds that he has not heard from Hassan for almost four days now, as the telecommunications in Gaza have been entirely cut off. Husam is Najwa’s nephew, the 30-yearold son of her brother. Displaced from AlShuja‘iyya, he now lives in a tent in Rafah; he has no relatives or friends in the area who can offer shelter. His house, finally finished after years of hard work and furnished just two months before the October onslaught, was totally destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. Husam has two daughters and three sons, all of whom have been left to endure the cruelty of the cold alongside their mother. His job doesn’t pay much. If
he and his family survive the genocide, he will have to rebuild all over again. Everyone in Gaza has experienced major calamities in their lives over the past four months. Najwa’s family was thrown into crisis. She and some of her children left their home and sought shelter in a school, leaving her husband and one of her sons, Ahmad, in the house. An Israeli airstrike on her house on Nov. 6 killed her husband and injured Ahmad; he remains hospitalized and cannot walk. He was granted permission to leave Gaza and receive medical care in Egypt, but he still hasn’t received medical transport. Najwa took her children to Khan Yunis, and they were displaced twice there, and then another two times in Rafah. “I feel my soul is swollen,” says Najwa. “I’m like a dying soul living in a functional body,” Najwa tells the Washington Report with tears in her eyes. “I’m tired and emotionally exhausted. My lovely and cozy neighborhood was entirely wiped out. My beloved husband was killed and my house bombed. All I have now are memories.” Najwa is grateful that her family has been able to find shelter in the house of an acquaintance. Yet the family is divided; Ahmad is in the hospital being cared for by two of his brothers, Ismail and Baraa, while Abrar and Sajid are with their mother. They all worry about Ahmad and pray he will be able to walk again. And they pray that they will all be reunited soon. ■
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Voices From Gaza
In Memoriam: Dr. Refaat Alareer: Poet, Professor and Palestinian Voice By Eman Alhaj Ali
A photo of Dr. Refaat Alareer that he posted on social media in late November with the caption “I am alive.” AN ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE on a home in Gaza City in December killed Dr. Refaat Alareer, a luminary Palestinian poet, professor, writer, translator and activist, together with six family members. Palestinians mourn the loss of a revered literary figure, often described as the voice of Gaza. He leaves behind a widow and six children. Dr. Alareer's impact extended far beyond his academic role as a professor in the English literature faculty at the Islamic University of Gaza, a position he assumed in 2007. He mentored a generation of young writers who, despite the challenges, chose to narrate their stories about Palestine in English to reach a wide audience. His killing was an assassination. It was a deliberate act—not random, not “collateral damage.” According to Euro-Med Monitor,
Eman Alhaj Ali is a journalist and translator based in Gaza. 22
“The airstrike surgically targeted the apartment on the second floor where Refaat was in a three-story building, and not the entire building; indicating the apartment was the target and not possible collateral damage.” Euro-Med Monitor also notes that Dr. Alareer received a death threat from someone claiming to be an Israeli officer shortly before he was assassinated. Dr. Alareer was my literature professor. I took many great courses with him, and they shaped my personality. Among them was a course on Shakespeare, a writer he absolutely loved, so much so that when my classmates and I saw him approach, we would tell one another “here comes Shakespeare.” Dr. Alareer illuminated the works of Shakespeare and other literary giants like Wilfred Owen for successive classes of Gazan university students and instilled in them a deep appreciation for English literature. His commitment to preserving oral history, as highlighted in a 2015 TED talk, underscored the urgency of maintaining and asserting cultural narratives before memories fade and in the face of a torrent of hostile propaganda amplified broadly. The closure of his influential Twitter account in 2018, which had 80,000 followers, was a reminder that those exposing Israel’s crimes would face challenges and attempts at silencing them. His new account, opened in 2020, had over 110,000 followers at the time of his death. Dr. Alareer encouraged me and others to write. He believed passionately in the importance of writing and advocated fighting with our pens and using our words to describe the Palestinian condition; that was the least we could do, he believed. As a founder of the “We Are Not Numbers” project, Dr. Alareer played a pivotal role in fostering collaboration between Gaza writers and external mentors, amplifying their stories globally. Many of the writers affiliated with that project are now publishing their work in various outlets like Electronic Intifada, Washington Report and Mondoweiss, in addition to the project’s website. Dr. Alareer was shaken by Israel’s October 2023 bombardment of the Islamic University, where he had taught, interacted with and nurtured talents in thousands of students. He joins a long list of assassinated academics, including Islamic University of Gaza president Sufyan Tayeh, who was martyred along with his family on Dec. 2, a few days before my professor. Born in 1979 in Shuja'iyya, Gaza City, Dr. Alareer’s personal journey was shaped by the pervasive weight of the Israeli occupation. Despite the adversities, he earned academic distinctions
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culminating in a Ph.D. in English Literature from Universiti Putra Malaysia. He coedited (with Laila El-Haddad) Gaza Unsilenced and edited Gaza Writes Back. Despite relentless Israeli bombardment, Dr. Alareer remained in northern Gaza after October 7, documenting the destruction and advocating for resilience. On an Electronic Intifada webcast days before his assassination, with the sound of Israeli bombs exploding in the background, Dr. Alareer said, “I am an academic. Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an EXPO marker. But if the Israelis invade and barge at us, charge at us open door-
to-door to massacre us, I am going to use that marker to throw it at Israeli soldiers even if that is the last thing that I would be able to do. And this is the feeling of everybody. We are helpless. We have nothing to lose.” In an interview with the BBC, he had compared the Hamas attacks of October 7 with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which some observers believe marked him as an Israeli target. Dr. Refaat Alareer’s legacy transcends the confines of academia, resonating profoundly among his students and everyone touched by his unwavering commitment to
storytelling in the face of adversity. As a mentor, father, father figure to his students and advocate for resilience, he embodied the spirit of intellectual resistance. Days before his death, Dr. Alareer pinned a poem he wrote in 2011 to the top of his Twitter/X timeline. Within days of his death that poem, “If I Must Die,” went viral and has been translated into more than 40 languages. It ends with the poignant sentiment, “If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.” Everyone who knew and loved him is determined to make sure that his story lives on as a catalyst for inspiration and change. ■
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Voices From Gaza
Israel’s War Erases Gaza’s Religious and By Maha Hussaini Cultural Heritage
PHOTO COURTESY DOAA ROUQA/REUTERS
artillery shelling across the different districts of Gaza. Many of those sites had been transformed into shelters for displaced Palestinians at the time of the attack, resulting in dozens of casualties. On Oct. 18, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius was damaged by an Israeli air strike on the adjacent 141-year-old Ahli Baptist Hospital, the oldest hospital in the strip. Two days later, it was directly targeted by a strike that killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens among the families who were taking refuge in the church. Randa Arteen, a Christian resident of Gaza, said the church was one of the few religious sites where The oldest mosque in Gaza, the Omari Mosque, was reduced to rubble by Israel’s bombardment with only its she and her community ancient minaret standing, on Jan. 2, 2024. would pray and spend religious holidays since Israel does not grant them permits to travel to Bethlehem through the Beit THE MATERIAL LOSS Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have suffered Hanoun (Erez) crossing each year. in three months of Israeli bombing is unprecedented. Not only have “The churches in the Gaza Strip are not many, but all of them are they lost their homes, entire neighborhoods and civilian infrastrucold and historic. So, if one church is destroyed, it is not actually one ture, but residents say another “immeasurable damage that cannot church, it is hundreds of years erased,“ the 53-year-old woman said. be repaired” has been the erasure of Gaza’s history. “Unlike any other churches, we had a special spiritual connection Since the beginning of its war on Gaza on Oct. 7, the Israeli milwith the Greek Orthodox Church in particular. It is a symbol of Palesitary has targeted and destroyed dozens of heritage sites, including tinian Christians in Gaza, and even across Palestine as well. historic churches and mosques, cultural museums and archaeolog“We used to attend Christmas there and light up the tree along ical structures that date back thousands of years. with the children every year. It is hard to believe that the few places Key religious sites have been a target for Israeli air strikes and available for Christians in Gaza are now destroyed.” Maha Hussaini is an award‐winning journalist and human rights ac‐ The almost 900-year-old church, one of the oldest in the world, tivist based in Gaza. Hussaini started her journalism career by cov‐ was one of three churches that were damaged across the strip.
ering Israel’s military campaign on the Gaza Strip in July 2014. In 2020, she won the prestigious Martin Adler Prize for her work as a freelance journalist. This article was published in Middle East Eye on Jan. 12, 2024 and used with their permission. 24
“MORE THAN JUST A MOSQUE” In addition to churches, at least 114 mosques have been destroyed
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and 200 others have been damaged in Gaza, including the 13th century Othman Bin Qashqar Mosque in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, and the medieval Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, located in the heart of the Old Town east of Gaza City and dating back to the seventh century. Umm Ahmed al-Saqqa, 64, who lives in the Al-Shuja‘iyya neighborhood, a few kilometers away from the Omari Mosque, said that she has prayed in the mosque since she was a child, especially during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Currently displaced in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip after her house was severely damaged, Umm Ahmed said she was more saddened by the destruction of the mosque than of her own home. “I was born and have lived all my life in this neighborhood. When I was around six years old, and throughout all my childhood years, my father used to take me and my siblings every night during Ramadan to perform the Taraweeh prayers in this mosque. I had my childhood and adulthood memories there,” Umm Ahmed said. “For us Palestinians, it is more than just a mosque. It is our history and our present. When we talk about Gaza, we talk about the Omari Mosque. We believed that it would be impossible to harm such a place, not just because it was a holy site, but because of its rich history and importance for both Muslims and Christians around the world.” The mosque, which was converted from a Byzantine church, is considered one of the oldest in the world. Close to the Omari Mosque lies Hammam al-Samra (the Samra Bath), a prominent and rare surviving example of an Ottoman architectural site in Gaza. On Dec. 30, Israeli strikes directly hit the site, destroying Turkish-style features that date back over 1,000 years.
SAINT HILARION In a report released by Heritage for Peace in November, documenting the impact of Israel’s war on Gaza’s cultural heritage, the organization said at least 104 out of 195 architectural heritage sites that it MARCH/APRIL 2024
counted in the coastal enclave were destroyed or damaged. Since it is impossible to assess the damage on-site, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) experts say they have been remotely monitoring the situation “using satellite data and information transmitted to us by third parties, in coordination with its partners and U.N. agencies on the ground, and our office in Ramallah.” “UNESCO has initiated in early October remote monitoring of the damage. As part of this remote monitoring, [we are] particularly concerned about the situation of the ruins of Saint Hilarion, inscribed on the National Tentative List of World Heritage 2012. These are the remains of one of the region’s earliest Christian monasteries,” a UNESCO spokesperson said, requesting anonymity. The ruins of Saint Hilarion are part of the Tell Umm Amer site, located in the al-Nussairat camp in the central Gaza Strip. The site has been severely damaged by the Israeli bombing campaign. “The conflict in the Gaza Strip has caused a serious humanitarian crisis affecting all aspects of civilian life. As stated publicly on several occasions, UNESCO is gravely concerned about this impact on education, culture and the protection of journalists—the pillars of its mandate,” he said. “While humanitarian emergencies are a legitimate priority, the protection of cultural heritage in all its forms—as well as the protection of educational and media infrastructures—must also be ensured, in accordance with international law, which stipulates that cultural property is civilian infrastructure, and as such must neither be targeted nor used for military purposes.“
WAR ON THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Another notable casualty of air strikes in Gaza City was the Central Archive Building, which was destroyed on Nov. 29. Run by the Municipality of Gaza, the building contained thousands of historical documents and national records about Gaza, dating back over 100 years.
In addition, at least three museums were destroyed or severely damaged, including the government-run Basha Palace Museum, which dates to the 13th century and was directly targeted. In Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, al-Qarara Cultural Museum was damaged multiple times by Israeli air strikes on adjacent homes. “It is like they are launching the attacks with an intention of destroying not only our present and future, but also our past,” said Mohammed Abulehia, the founder of Qarara Museum. Abulehia, who established the museum in 2016, says explosive barrels were dropped on the neighborhood and in its vicinity, severely damaging the building and the collection. “The museum contained a collection of over 5,000 assets, including antiquities and items that date back to the Canaanite period. I collected them and put immense efforts to establish the museum to protect and preserve the heritage of Gaza,” Abulehia said. “Israeli occupation forces dropped heavy bombs on a home very close to the museum. Due to the massive explosion and the air pressure, the museum was severely affected, and many items were destroyed or lost.” Abulehia, who has not been able to reach the museum to inspect the damage due to displacement, said he expects to return to find it completely or severely damaged. “Following the first attack, I am sure that multiple other attacks have damaged the museum again. However, I cannot currently reach it since I have been displaced to Rafah.” The situation in Khan Yunis and in the area where the museum in particular is located is very dangerous, he added. “It has been under intense Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling for weeks. No one can reach it.” Abulehia said the damage from the war has been immense, on all levels of Gaza’s society, both material and moral. “It is like they are launching the attacks with an intention of destroying not only our present and future, but also our past.” ■
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Special Report
The Gaza I Loved Will Never Be the Same
PHOTO BY JEHAD ALSHRAFI/ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES
By Gideon Levy
The lifeless body of a Palestinian child killed in Israeli attacks is brought to the mortuary of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on Jan. 22, 2024. AN EMAIL in English: “My name is Yuval Caspi and I’m the daughter of Dr. Yosef Caspi. You once wrote an article about my father.…I hope you can help me locate it and the date of its publication.” I had no idea what this was referring to. The Haaretz archive found it: On July 14, 1995, 30 years ago, I accompanied Dr. Caspi on a visit to the Nasser Children’s Hospital in Khan Yunis. Caspi, the former doctor of an elite IDF unit and the director of the pediatric surgery department at Soroka Hospital at the time, had volunteered to treat pediatric cardiac patients in Gaza. He would transfer some of these young patients to Soroka for treatment, when he was able to obtain the necessary donations. The search for the long-forgotten article was also like a trip back in a time machine to an equally forgotten reality. Today, Nasser Hos-
Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and the author of The Punish‐ ment of Gaza, available from Middle East Books and More. This article was first published in Haaretz, on Dec. 3, 2023. © Haaretz. Reprinted with permission. 26
pital is at the center of the fighting in Khan Yunis. The wounded and dead are rushed there by the dozens and hundreds daily. In this war, it’s no longer a children’s hospital. Hard to say whether it can really be called a hospital anymore, with people dying on the floor there without medicine and the building surrounded by the Israeli army. The hospital director, Dr. Nahed Abu Taima, told Radio A-Shams this week, “We’re caught up in a catastrophe.” Nothing remains of what was found then, in the hopeful days of 1995. Dr. Caspi doesn’t live here anymore either. His daughter told me he moved to the U.S. not long after that time, far from Soroka and from Nasser. He’s 71 now. And Hani al-Hatum should be 40 today, if he’s still alive. In the summer of 1995, Al-Hatum was admitted to Nasser Hospital because of a congenital heart valve defect. He had a forlorn expression and blue lips. His blood pressure threatened to burst the blood vessels in his brain. Mohammed Batash was a younger patient. He was Continued on p. 39
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From the Diaspora
“We Will Come to You in a Roaring Flood”: The Untold Background of the Oct. 7 Attacks
PHOTO BY JACK GUEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
By Ramzy Baroud
An Israeli navy warship sails in the Mediterranean Sea waters off the coast of the Gaza Strip as pictured from a position along the border in southern Israel on Jan. 4, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. THE DRAMATIC events in Palestine starting on Oct. 7 have taken many people by surprise. However, attentive observers knew that the status quo was untenable. Few expected that Palestinian fighters would be parachuting into southern Israel on Oct. 7; that instead of capturing a single Israeli soldier—as was done in 2006—hundreds of Israelis, including many soldiers and civilians, would find themselves captive in besieged Gaza. The reason behind the “surprise,” however, is the same reason that Israel is still reeling under collective shock: it tends to pay close attention to its internal political discourses and intelligence analyses while largely neglecting Palestinian discourses. To better understand the events of Oct. 7, let us go back to the events of the year that preceded it.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book, co‐edited with Ilan Pappé, Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out, is available from Middle East Books and More. Dr. Baroud is a non‐resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>. MARCH/APRIL 2024
THE SPARK We entered 2023 with some depressing data and dark predictions about what was awaiting Palestinians in the new year. Just before the year commenced, the United Nations Middle East envoy, Tor Wennesland, said that 2022 was the most violent year since 2005. “Too many people, overwhelmingly Palestinian, have been killed and injured,” Wennesland told the U.N. Security Council. The actual figure—171 killed and hundreds wounded in the West Bank alone—did not receive much coverage in Western media. The mounting Palestinian victims, however, registered among Palestinians and their resistance movements. As anger and calls for revenge grew among ordinary Palestinians, their leadership continued to play its same traditional role—of pacifying Palestinian calls for resistance, while continuing with its “security coordination” with Israel. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, 88, carried on rehashing the old language about a two-state solution and the “peace process,” while cracking down on Palestinians who dared protest his ineffectual leadership.
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Defenseless in the face of a far-right Israeli government with an open agenda to crush Palestinians, to expand illegal settlements and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, Palestinians were forced to develop their own defensive strategies. The Lions’ Den—a multifactional resistance group which first appeared in the city of Nablus in August 2022—grew in power and appeal. Other groups, old and new, emerged on the scene throughout the northern West Bank, with the single objective of uniting Palestinians around a nonfactional agenda and, ultimately, producing a new Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. These developments sounded alarm bells in Israel. The Israeli occupation army moved quickly to crush the new armed rebellion, raiding Palestinian towns and refugee camps one after the other, with the hope of turning this nascent revolution into another failed attempt to challenge the status quo in occupied Palestine. The bloodiest of the Israeli incursions occurred in Nablus on Feb. 23, Jericho on
Aug. 15 and, most important, in the Jenin refugee camp. The July 3 Israeli invasion of Jenin was reminiscent, in terms of casualties and degree of destruction, to the Israeli invasion of that very camp in April 2002. The outcome, however, was not the same. Back then, Israel invaded Jenin, along with other Palestinian towns and refugee camps, and succeeded in crushing armed resistance for years to come. This time around, the Israeli invasion merely ignited a wider rebellion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, creating a further schism in the already deteriorating relationship between Palestinians, on the one hand, and Abbas and his PA, on the other. Indeed, just days after Israel concluded its attack on the camp, Abbas emerged with thousands of his soldiers to warn the bereaved refugees that “the hand that will break the unity of the people...will be cut off from its arm.” Yet as the popular rebellion continued to build momentum in the West Bank, Israeli
intelligence reports started talking about a plan composed by the deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, Saleh Arouri, to ignite an armed intifada. The solution, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, citing official Israeli sources, was to kill Arouri. A drone attack in Beirut killed Arouri on Jan. 2, 2024. Indeed, Israel’s attention and counterstrategy was focused intently on the West Bank; Israel believed that Hamas, based in Gaza at the time, seemed disinterested in an all-out confrontation. But why did Israel reach such a conclusion?
MISCALCULATION Several major events, the kind that would have pushed Hamas to retaliate, have taken place without any serious armed response by the resistance in Gaza. Last December, Israel swore in its most right-wing government in history. Far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich arrived on the political scene with
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the declared objectives of annexing the West Bank, imposing military control over al-Aqsa Mosque and other Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy sites and, in the case of Smotrich, denying the very existence of the Palestinian people. Their pledges were quickly translated into action under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. BenGvir was keen on sending a message to his constituency that the seizure of al-Aqsa Mosque by Israel had become imminent. He repeatedly raided or ordered raids on al-Aqsa at an unprecedented frequency. The most violent and humiliating of these raids occurred on April 4, when worshippers were beaten up by soldiers while praying inside the mosque during the holy month of Ramadan. Resistance groups in Gaza threatened retaliation. In fact, several rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel, merely serving as a symbolic reminder that Palestinians are united, regardless of where they are in the geographic map of historic Palestine. Israel, however, ignored the message, and used the Palestinian threats of retaliation, and the occasional “lone-wolf attacks”—like that of Muhannad al-Mazaraa at the illegal Maale Adumim settlement— as political capital to ignite the religious fervor of Israeli society. Not even the death of Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan on May 2 seemed to have shifted Hamas’ position. Some even suggested that there was a rift between Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) following Adnan’s death as a result of his hunger strike in Ramleh Prison. Adnan was one of PIJ’s most prominent members. On the day Adnan died, the PIJ fired rockets into Israel. Israel answered by attacking hundreds of targets inside Gaza, mostly civilian homes and infrastructure, which resulted in the death of 33 Palestinians and the wounding of 147. A truce was declared on May 13, again with no direct Hamas participation, giving further reassurance to Israel that its bloody onslaught on the Strip—often referred to with the sick euphemism “mowing the lawn”—had achieved not only a military purpose but a political one as well. MARCH/APRIL 2024
Israel’s strategic estimation, however, proved to be wrong. On Oct. 7 Hamas executed well-coordinated attacks in southern Israel, targeting numerous military bases, settlements and other strategic positions.
“ROARING FLOOD” A quick examination of Hamas’ recent statements and political discourse demonstrate that the Palestinian group was hardly secretive about its future action. At a Gaza rally on Dec. 14, 2022, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, had a message for Israel: “We will come to you in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets; we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers…like the repeating tide.” The immediate response to the Hamas attack was the predictable U.S.-Western solidarity with Israel, calls for revenge, the complete destruction and annihilation of Gaza and the revitalized plans of displacing Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt and out of the West Bank into Jordan. The Israeli war on the Strip has resulted in unprecedented Palestinian casualties compared to all Israeli wars on Palestinians during any time in modern history. The term “genocide” is now commonly used to describe Israel’s conduct in this war—initially by intellectuals and activists, but soon picked up by international law experts. “Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open and unashamed,” associate professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, Raz Segal, wrote on Oct. 13 in an article published in Jewish Currents entitled “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” Yet the U.N. did nothing. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Nov. 8 that the U.N. has “neither money nor power” to prevent a potential genocide in Gaza. In essence, this effectively meant the disabling of the international legal and political systems, as every attempt by the Security Council to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire has been blocked or watered down by the U.S. and Israel’s other Western allies.
SUMUD As the death toll mounted among a starving population in Gaza, Palestinians resisted throughout the Gaza Strip. (By Nov. 28, the World Food Program estimated that Gazans were food deprived.) Fighters resisted militarily, attacking and ambushing invading Israeli soldiers, and the population resisted by rejecting plans to ethnically cleanse them into the Sinai Desert. This sumud continued, even when Israel began to systematically attack hospitals, schools and every place that, in times of war, are seen as “safe places” for a beleaguered civilian population. Indeed, on Dec. 3, U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk said that “there is no safe place in Gaza.” This phrase was repeated often by other U.N. officials; as early as Oct. 31, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said, “Gaza has become a graveyard for children.” This left Guterres with no other option but to invoke Article 99, which allows the secretary-general to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” Israeli violence and Palestinian sumud extended to the West Bank as well. Aware of the potential for armed resistance in the West Bank, the Israeli army quickly launched major, deadly raids on countless Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps, killing hundreds, injuring thousands and arresting thousands more. But Gaza remained the epicenter of the Israeli genocide. Aside from a brief “humanitarian truce” from Nov. 24 to Dec. 1, coupled with a few prisoner exchanges, the battle for Gaza—in fact, for the future of Palestine and the Palestinian people—continues, at an unparalleled price of death and destruction. Palestinians know full well that the current fight will either mean a new Nakba, like the ethnic cleansing of 1948, or the beginning of the reversal of that same Nakba—as in the process of liberating the Palestinian people from the yoke of Israeli colonialism. There are sound reasons to believe that the Palestinian people’s determination to win their freedom in coming years is far greater than Israel’s ability to break their resistance. ■
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Special Report By John Gee
PHOTO BY AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Retaliation? Revenge? Or Policy?
People check the rubble of a building in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, following Israeli bombardment the previous night, on Dec. 27, 2023. The Israeli air strike killed a Hezbollah fighter and two of his relatives. Since 1982, Shi’ia villages and towns in south Lebanon and in south Beirut, where Hezbollah has solid political and organizational support, have been the target of Israel’s “Dahiya Doctrine. IN INTERNATIONAL LAW and in the eyes of the global public— at least, in non-belligerent countries—war should not be waged on civilians. They may unavoidably be killed or injured in the course of military operations, but they must not be deliberately targeted. And yet, they often are. In Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip, more than 24,000 people had been killed by mid-January—1 percent of the population. Several thousand others remain under the rubble and are not included in this figure. (In U.S. terms, that would be 3.36 million people, more than all U.S. military deaths in all United States wars put together.) The great majority were civilians. Early in Israel’s offensive, President Joe Biden said that too many Palestinian civilians were being killed. Perhaps he could share his views on what an appropriate number
John Gee is a free‐lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel. 30
of Palestinian civilian deaths would be. The evident killing, maiming and forcible evacuation of civilians, the destruction of their homes, wrecking of medical facilities and restriction of food and water supplies have drawn strong condemnation from people around the world, even though some of their governments have dragged their feet in calling for an end to the horrors of Israel’s Gaza war. Yet still, Israel’s military activity in the Gaza Strip often seems to be misread. For supporters of Israel reluctant to get too much blood splashed on their own hands, what Israel has done to Palestinian civilians is a form of overreach: it should focus more strictly on combatting Hamas and take greater care not to harm civilians “unnecessarily.” Critics accuse Israel of acting in a spirit of revenge for the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the combat losses they are sustaining. In fact, what the world has witnessed in the latest Gaza war is in keeping with past Israeli military practice in seeking to quell Pales-
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tinian resistance: harm to civilians is not a chance by-product of warfare against an armed enemy nor is it motivated mainly by a desire for vengeance. It follows a pattern of Israeli counter-insurgency practice. For any colonial or occupying regime facing an armed resistance movement with significant popular support, success or failure has ultimately depended upon isolating armed insurgents from their base of support. During the South African war of 18991902, Britain herded Afrikaner civilians into concentration camps to deprive their fighting men of support. During the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s, Britain forcibly resettled many Chinese civilians in rural areas in “New Villages” in order to choke off supplies of food, information and recruits from the Communist guerrillas, a policy later imitated by the United States in Vietnam with “strategic hamlets.” Since 1948, Israel has likewise sought to isolate active Palestinian resistance fighters from any popular support base, but with some differences in method. These are due to the settler colonial character of Israel and specifically to the Zionist goal of the displacement of the indigenous population in favor of incoming settlers, rather than securing their subjugation as an exploited and compliant nationality. This characteristic of Israel means that expelling Palestinian communities beyond its area of occupation is not only a possible tactic, but also considered desirable, when feasible. The expulsion of Palestinians from their land and their replacement with Israeli Jewish settlers in 1948 was a consequence of this strategy. Alert to this, most Palestinians who came under Israeli occupation in 1967 resolved to stay put, despite being encouraged to leave through the gradual strangulation of their society. It is primarily their awareness of the threat of a second Nakba that has made most Palestinians of the Gaza Strip determined to remain in their devastated corner of Palestine rather than move elsewhere. Mass expulsion has not always been possible, whether for political or practical reasons. In such situations Israel has sought to isolate non-combatants from combatants through intimidation. In pracMARCH/APRIL 2024
THE HUMAN SHIELD CHARGE ONE REPEATED charge by Israel against Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip (not limited to the most recent war) is that they “hide” amidst the civilian population and are thereby responsible for its suffering when Israel attacks them. Anyone who is familiar with the history of armed anti-colonial struggles (or indeed, of resistance movements against Axis occupation during World War II) must know that heavily outnumbered and outgunned fighters did not expose themselves to annihilation for the convenience of powerful enemies, but sheltered among supportive populations. In making this charge, Israeli spokespeople expect listeners to be unaware that “hiding” among a civilian population was exactly what armed Zionist underground organizations did in the final years of the British Mandate in Palestine. British troops and police repeatedly complained of the difficulty they had in capturing terrorists who were able to melt into the surrounding population following an attack. People on “wanted” lists sheltered within the wider Jewish community in Palestine and when they needed to move, sometimes wore disguises to blend in: Yitzhak Shamir, who later became prime minister of Israel, customarily disguised himself as an Orthodox rabbi, for example. Arms caches and dumps were kept in residential areas. In Operation Shark, carried out in the wake of the 1946 King David Hotel bombing by the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Zionist underground organization, five large arms dumps were discovered by the British, one of which was in the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv. tice, that has meant carrying out attacks on communities considered to be either sympathetic to Palestinian fighters (such as Palestinian villages or neighborhoods) or not actively hostile to them (such as much of south Lebanon’s population in the 1970s), while professedly attacking “terrorist nests.” Usually, there was a military pretext for the action, but the disproportionate level of destruction visited upon the communities concerned is strongly indicative of deliberate policy. Many examples could be cited. In October 1953, after a grenade attack that killed a mother and two children, Israel attacked the West Bank village of Qibya (described by Benny Morris in Israel’s Border Wars 1949-1956). The village was regarded as a base for “infiltrators” and an appropriate target, although there was no proof that those who had carried out the grenade attack had come from there. The Israeli Central Command’s instructions to the attacking units were “to attack and temporarily to occupy the village, carry out destruction and maximum killing, in order to drive out the inhabitants of the village from their homes.” Sixtynine people, mostly women and children, were killed.
Between 1968 and 1970, when the Palestinian resistance movement carried on armed struggle from bases in Jordan, Israel repeatedly bombed and shelled nearby Jordanian towns and villages. This included the napalm bombing of the cities of Irbid and Salt in 1968, resulting in the destruction of buildings and the injury or death of civilians. The message for Jordanians was clear: support or tolerate Palestinian armed resistance, and you will be made to pay a high price. These attacks undoubtedly played a part in alienating sectors of Jordanian society from the Palestinian resistance and enabling Jordanian army action to break the guerrilla movement’s power in Jordan in September 1970. A similar approach was taken toward the villages and towns of south Lebanon during the Israeli occupation from 1982 to the present. Much later, during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the policy was amplified; Shi’a villages and residential buildings in south Beirut, where Hezbollah had solid political and organizational support, were destroyed. Gadi Eizenkot, commander of the Israeli army’s northern front, went on public record in an October 2008 interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, concernContinued on p. 39
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UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER- U.S. NAVY PHOTO .
USS Liberty Veterans Testify in the “Live Free or Die” State By Delinda C. Hanley
A helicopter sent from the USS America finally assists the USS Liberty, a Navy electronic reconnaissance gathering ship, 17 hours after Israel’s attack on June 8, 1967. “LIVE FREE OR DIE” is the official motto of the State of New Hampshire. That motto was brought up repeatedly on Jan. 12, 2024, during the dramatic testimony of USS Liberty survivors in support of the State of New Hampshire’s House Bill 1041, which calls for the establishment of a commission to investigate the Israeli shelling of the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967 and its aftermath. Sponsored by Republican Representatives Jason Gerhard and Michael Granger, this legislation would help the survivors and families of the 34 killed shipmates to get meaningful answers to their many questions about this attack. Of the original crew of 294 officers and civilians, 34 men were killed and another 174 wounded in action that day. “These sailors have sacrificed so much, some of them even lost their lives in this attack. I feel that the least we can do is finally give them some closure with an investigation that is satisfactory,”
Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report. 32
Gerhard told the New Hampshire’s State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee. Commander David Edwin Lewis, who was born, raised and died free on Oct. 16, 2021, in Colebrook, NH, was a senior cryptologist who earned a Purple Heart onboard the Liberty. Gerhard read from his obituary: “For the rest of his life, Eddie bore the scars of that day, and he was deeply involved with the group of survivors, proving that the state of Israel and the Johnson administration deliberately staged the attack to try and draw the U.S. into the Israeli-Egyptian Six-Day War in 1967.” Larry Bowen, who also received the Purple Heart for his service on the Liberty, told the committee: “I’ve never had the opportunity to tell the American public what happened. Our government failed to come to our rescue. Our government put a gag order on us to not speak about this and threatened us with imprisonment and fines if we did. Our government failed to do a thorough investigation of the
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blood for our country and we would do it again. We’re not here in anger,” Tourney emphasized. “We love our country, our fellow shipmates and all of you. We’re all Americans. If we don’t look out for each other—we’re done. We’re in the ‘Live Free or Die’ state. No one else has had the courage to do this...God saved our ship...but our government took away our rights. Don’t throw us down the road...” Jason Gerhard asked Tourney to clarify what exactly happened after the Israeli attack. Tourney said that 17 hours after the attack the seriously wounded were taken off the ship and the remaining sailors were ordered to sail to Malta—probably hoping that the evidence would sink—when the closest port was Crete. For four decades the Washington Report has published articles about the USS Liberty, and Middle East Books has carried numerous books documenting the crew’s struggle for justice. Watching this hearing confirmed this reporter’s belief that local U.S. government can work, even as lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to support Israel’s version of facts in the past and present. While this measure was proposed before the recent Gaza attacks, it is an attempt to kick the federal government into gear to start doing its job, Gerhard affirmed. Unsurprisingly, the promised press conference after the session never materialized, and there have been no subsequent media reports. But as long as there are legislators like Jason Gerhard and Michael Granger, there is hope for justice for these veterans. Please watch these historic proceedings. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITq3l RP9ct4> ■
attack. The Navy held a formal court of inquiry and took testimony from several of my shipmates but then were given guidance to modify the testimony that they received so that it would comply with the mistaken identity claim Israel made when it apologized for the attack. “We’ve waited 56 and a half years for the opportunity to speak before a government body…I believe this bill will put in motion the commission that will do what Congress should have done over 56 years ago. There are still many questions to be answered related to the attack and its aftermath. Please support this effort to help get closure for the crew and the families of my fellow shipmates. God bless you and help you to make the right decision.” When asked what a commission could accomplish so many years after the incident, Bowen explained that the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency are holding onto classified information they won’t release. Their ship was overflown half a dozen times by Israeli aircraft doing reconnaissance, Bowen recalled, but “we felt safe because they were allies who had our backs.” The attackers used unmarked planes to strafe and drop napalm so the crew didn’t know who was attacking them until the torpedo ships with the Star of David emblem came to finish them off. “There were voice intercepts between the Israeli pilots and their ground controllers who did identify us as an American ship,” Bowen said. The crew believes Israel hoped Egypt would be blamed for sinking their ship. A lot of facts have come together in the years since the attack that have never been put together, Bowen concluded. Bryce Lockwood, then a gunnery sergeant, now a retired Baptist minister, passed around photos taken the morning after the attack by crew from the USS America; in one of them, he was only 10 feet away from the torpedo hole. “Every protocol designed to protect against accidents was broken,” Lockwood said. “They used unmarked aircraft. They jammed our distress frequency. They machine-gunned our life rafts. We were not in a combat zone, we were in international waters, 13 and a
half miles off the Sinai Peninsula. “There has been no investigation by Congress, as required by Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10 of the U.S. Constitution to investigate acts of piracy on the high seas. When the USS Cole was attacked and 17 Americans were killed, there was a 9-month investigation.” Twice as many were killed on the Liberty and that flawed investigation was concluded in five days, Lockwood said. President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered Admiral Isaac Kidd and Ward Boston, who took testimony from shaken survivors right after the attack, to report that the attack on the ship was a case of mistaken identity. In 2005 James R. Gotcher, general legal counsel for the USS Liberty Veterans Association, submitted a “Report of War Crimes” brief, documenting crimes committed by Israel against U.S. military personnel to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was obligated to initiate an official inquiry. There was no investigation. Philip Tourney, president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, who traveled from Cedaredge, CO, to attend the hearing, said he would have walked to New Hampshire to testify because “I’ve never had the chance to sit before a committee willing to listen to us....This is the most important thing you’ll have ever done in your whole life...to represent 34 men killed that day, 25 of them blown to bits by a torpedo. This attack lasted as long as the attack on Pearl Harbor and yet LBJ and McNamara recalled aircraft from the USS Saratoga and USS America sent out to help us. We were left out there to die for 17 hours when help was only 40 minutes away. We shed our
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PHOTO BY JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Attacks on Campus Free Speech
Supporters of Palestine gather in Harvard Yard to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza at a rally in Cambridge on Oct. 14, 2023. Both pro‐ and anti‐Israel narratives are protected speech that should not be suppressed or censored on university campuses.
Campus Free Speech Is on Life Support By Bruce Fein
FREEDOM OF SPEECH on campus is on life support. It is pummeled daily to silence views that may disturb delusions of infallibility or stunted, cocooned minds. The free speech wisdom of liberal icon Justice William O. Douglas displayed in his decision in Terminiello v. Chicago (1949) has been turned on its head: “[A] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan and is author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy and American Empire Before The Fall. Twitter feed: @brucefeinesq. Brucefein@substack.com. <www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com>. 34
unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.” Whatever happened to the adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me?” We have regressed to the anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era, but without a fearless Edward R. Murrow to call the madness to account. In early December Rep. Elise Stefanik (RNY) grilled the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT with fanciful hypotheticals about a student call for genocide of Jews. She also twisted the meaning of intifada (uprising) to equate the word with genocide. In fact, she had ulterior motives; there is no evidence that any student on any campus had ever uttered such vileness, and the question implied the congresswoman’s complacency with genocides of non-Jews, such as Palestinians, which has been underway in Gaza for months.
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armored knight must be restrained to protect the thinker from Civilization was born when the first person reflected, “I could be physical destruction. wrong. I need to entertain conflicting ideas or narratives.” The OrIt is educational malpractice for any university to suppress any acles at Delphi declared Socrates the wisest person in Athens bespeech on campus short of the Brandenburg incitement standard. cause he knew what he didn’t know and insisted on asking and To the extent speech is defamatory to individuals or is intended to answering “why” before moving to “how.” Socrates chose the heminflict extreme emotional distress on them, courts with the lock over living an unexamined life, a figurative Emancipation trappings of due process are open to entertain tort claims to Proclamation for minds held in servitude to unthinking orthodoxies remedy the alleged harm. But prior restraints are forbidden. or witless rulers. Defamatory statements regarding groups are protected by the Free speech is instinctively alarming to ordinary people who First Amendment. President Thomas Jefferson, whose proudest need absolute certainty—a blueprint that guarantees a place in hour was creating the University of Virginia, related, “I have sworn heaven in a putative afterlife. They are frightened by free speech upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny because it exposes the indeterminant nature of truth—more over the mind of man.” chiaroscuro than prime colors. They readily embrace simple answers to complex questions even if those answers are wrong or POLITICAL SPEECH IS PROTECTED SPEECH disastrous. Free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment, to place it beyond the vicissitudes of politics and the unschooled folThe Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli governlies of popular opinion. United States Supreme ment’s genocidal response against 2.3 million Court Justice Robert Jackson elaborated in Palestinian civilians in Gaza have given birth to West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barcompeting narratives on campus, both of which nette (1943): “The very purpose of a Bill of are protected by the First Amendment. One narRights was to withdraw certain subjects from the niversity paternal- rative condemns the attack as unprovoked tervicissitudes of political controversy, to place rorism aiming to inflict a second Holocaust on ism to shield students Jews while chanting “From the River to the them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be from adversarial or Sea.” The narrative also aims to stigmatize or applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty as anti-Semitic critics of the Israel govantagonistic speech is ostracize and property, to free speech, a free press, freeernment’s merciless siege of Gaza (e.g., no a dagger to the dom of worship and assembly, and other fundawater, food, medicine or shelter) and indiscrimmental rights may not be submitted to vote; they inate killings of Palestinian civilians, international advance of wisdom depend on the outcome of no elections.” relief workers, medical staff, academics and and knowledge. journalists. This narrative is predominant within THE BRANDENBURG EXCEPTION TO the United States government and on university FREE SPEECH campuses. House Resolution 888, for example, declares that “denying Israel’s right to exist is a Free speech is constitutionally protected from form of anti-Semitism.” censorship by government, not private parties, But where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to define including private universities. The latter enjoy a First Amendment anti-Semitism? Are members elected for expertise in the area? A right to desist from associating or promoting ideas they abhor. But very substantial percentage of Jews oppose Zionism, believing that when a university chooses that right of censorship, it compromises Judaism is a religion and Israel a form of idolatry preoccupied with its raison d’etre—to impart critical thinking that demands reasons worshipping power for its own sake in lieu of God like every nation. supplemented by the bright lamp of experience to verify any asAnti-Zionism began with Jews fearful of the charge of “dual loyalties” sertion or theory. and convinced that true Judaism transcended national borders and Most of what we believe consists of engaging with and concluding included all who subscribed to the 613 mitzvot (commandments) in that alternative explanations are less convincing. Exposure to the Torah. Their anti-Zionist speech is clearly protected by the First falsities sharpens the mental faculties by requiring thinking and the Amendment, notwithstanding Congress. crystallization of counterarguments. Critical thinking atrophies The House resolution postulates Israel’s right to exist. But no without constant exercise. All speech should be welcomed as nation possesses a legally enforceable right to exist. Every boundary assisting the search for truth without ulterior motives. That is the in the world has been drawn by the sword, not by principles of justice. theme of John Milton’s famous Areopagitica: “Let her [Truth] and “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free Thucydides related in his History of the Peloponnesian War. and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest The resolution predictably references nothing to support its unsuppressing.” In other words, as Justice Louis D. Brandeis taught in supported assertion. Moreover, if Israel has a right to exist found Whitney v. California (1927), the remedy for ill-advised speech is discerned in the stars, then why does Palestine not enjoy an equal more speech, not enforced silence. right to exist? Indeed, the government of Prime Minister Binyamin The one exception to free speech is speech that incites Netanyahu is bugling for the “voluntary” emigration of Palestinians violent, lawless action that is imminently likely to succeed, as the in Gaza after turning the territory into a wasteland. Supreme Court explained in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). The
U
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Students at the University of Central Florida hold a rally and march in support of Palestinians in Orlando, Florida on Oct. 13, 2023. Israel has confessed its strategy to censor or suppress detractors. Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli minister of education, and winner of the Israel Prize, elaborated: “It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe somebody criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When in the United States, people are critical of Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.” An alternative campus narrative argues, among other things, that irrespective of the Hamas violence on Oct. 7, Israel’s genocidal response targeting the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, including war crimes, should be condemned. The genocide includes a siege that, according to the Israeli defense minister’s proclamation, means, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water… ” Article II (c) of the Genocide Convention in 1949, born of the Holocaust, defines genocide as, “Deliberately inflicting on [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” South Africa has sued Israel in the International Court of Justice alleging genocide. To complement the physical destruction caused by the siege, the Israeli government has bombed and invaded Gaza, killing tens of thousands of civilians, and displaced virtually its entire population targeting hospitals, ambulances, journalists, water mains, houses, apartment buildings, schools, offices, marketplaces, United Nationsmarked schools, UNRWA personnel, places of worship and refugee camps, roads and bridges. 36
Both pro- and anti-Israel narratives are protected speech that should not be suppressed or censored on university campuses. They may provoke anger. But as Terminiello explains, that is an earmark that free speech is serving its high purpose. The speech may be hated. But as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes underscored in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), protecting freedom for the thought that we hate is a First Amendment priority. Thoughts that are loved need no protection. University paternalism to shield students from adversarial or antagonistic speech is a dagger to the advance of wisdom and knowledge. John Stuart Mill advised in On Liberty: “A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
STEFANIK’S BAITING OF UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS Free speech principles took a beating in Rep. Stefanik’s exchanges with the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn regarding anti-Semitism during a Dec. 5, 2023 hearing of the House Committee on Education and its dreadful aftermath. The congresswoman asked MIT president Dr. Sally Kornbluth, “[D]oes calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment?” There was no legitimate legislative purpose behind the question. Congress possesses no constitutional authority to prescribe
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Alumni gather to protest Columbia University’s decision to ban the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters, in New York, NY on Nov. 20, 2023. codes of conduct for universities or to inquire into their hypothetical enforcement policies. Stefanik’s question was confrontational for the sake of confrontation. No response was required of Dr. Kornbluth. The Supreme Court amplified in Watkins v. United States (1957) that “Investigations conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to 'punish' those investigated are indefensible.” Stefanik’s illicit purpose was to jawbone Dr. Kornbluth into suppressing speech against Jews protected by the First Amendment at MIT. Calling for the genocide of Jews or any other group simply does not satisfy the threshold of unprotected incitement established in Brandenburg. Stefanik’s ulterior partisan political motive was betrayed by the underinclusiveness of her question. It concerned calling for genocide of Jews alone to the exclusion of urging genocides of other groups, for example, Biafrans, Tutsi or Uyghurs. Moreover, as Stefanik posed her question about a hypothetical calling for genocide of Jews, she ignored the prima facie case of genocide of Palestinians in Gaza that was unfolding for all the world to see, aided and abetted by weapons she had voted to send to Israel. That genocide claim is now in the hands of the International Court of Justice. To offer an optimal defense of free speech at MIT, Dr. Kornbluth should have answered as follows: We protect speech short of Brandenburg’s incitement threshold as beneficial to critical thinking and the search for truth without ulterior motives. We protect such MARCH/APRIL 2024
speech whether it calls for genocide of Jews or genocide of any other group, including Palestinians. As Justice Holmes taught in Abrams v. United States (1919), “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market…That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.” We need always to be on guard to protect speech that we hate more than speech that we love. We trust our students to distinguish between truth and falsehoods through trial and error or otherwise. Wisdom is made of sterner stuff than scampering away from views that anger or infuriate.
Protecting Free Speech and Promoting Dialogue on Campus By Dale Sprusansky TWO DEANS of major American universities co-wrote an op-ed in the Oct. 30, 2023 New York Times arguing that college campuses need to better promote dialogue and challenge zero-sum narratives regarding the ongoing Gaza war. Keren Yarhi-Milo, dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and Amaney Jamal, dean of the Princeton School of Public
Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report.
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and International Affairs, wrote: “As deans, we know that in this volatile political environment, we must ensure that our campuses have places where each side can air their opinions and even come together and hold difficult conversations without fear of retaliation…Campuses must protect free speech and equally advocate mutually respectful dialogue.” On Dec. 12, 2023, the two university leaders participated in a virtual event hosted by the University of Maryland’s Sadat Forum. Moderator Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, began by noting that controversies and conflicts on college campuses are not abnormal. However, the degree of tension on campuses since Oct. 7 is “on a scale we don’t often see,” he said. Yarhi-Milo, who served in Israeli military intelligence before entering academia, acknowledged the right of students to voice their opinions. “Protests have a really important place on campuses in the history of democratic society,” she said. However, she believes campus leaders have an obligation to encourage students to look past slogans and simplified narratives and “be willing to wrestle with complex, difficult questions….On university campuses you want to make sure [protests are] not the only way we engage with this conflict.” Jamal, whose family are Palestinian refugees, said she hopes her long-time friendship with Yarhi-Milo shows others that there is space for dialogue even amid disagreements. “We’re going to demonstrate, not simply by lip service, but by example, what it means to collaborate and cooperate,” she said. Jamal noted that her current students “don’t even remember a time period when there was a peace process” and are inherently skeptical that such a process could result in a just resolution to the conflict. However, Jamal said she and YarhiMilo believe that the only viable future is one in which Palestinians and Israelis reach peace through dialogue. (Many aca(Advertisement)
demics and observers believe the so-called peace process was fundamentally flawed and designed to give cover to Israeli settlement growth while ignoring central Palestinian concerns.) Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, noted that Palestinian campus groups have been under constant attack in recent months from an array of pro-Israel groups, politicians and donors. “Calls for schools to investigate pro-Palestinian students and student groups for material support for terrorism without any evidentiary basis” are “dangerous,” she warned. Such accusations “can carry really serious long-term consequences for those who are being unfairly maligned,” she added. Campus leaders “need to recognize what is and is not protected speech,” Shamsi emphasized. To be clear, she noted that schools are under no obligation to protect those threatening the safety of others. “Neither the First Amendment nor academic freedom principals protect speech that is a serious and imminent threat of harm, or an incitement to violence, or speech that pervasively harasses someone based on protected characteristics,” she maintained, but speech that is deemed controversial or even hateful is protected by the First Amendment. Differentiating between protected and unprotected speech can be tricky at times, she acknowledged. “Sometimes it’s a legal question, and these are hard lines to draw,” she said. “But the answer cannot be to restrict speech.” Shamsi noted that the ACLU is currently challenging the University of Florida’s decision to disband its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter in response to an order issued by Governor Ron DeSantis (R). Several other universities, including Columbia, where Yarhi-Milo works, have also suspended their SJP chapters. Columbia additionally suspended its Jewish Voice for Peace student chapter. Jamal believes the current rancor on campuses is indicative of broader realities. “The United States is a very strong ally of Israel, and the media establishment, along with the political establishment, doesn’t allow for much room for critical and thoughtful analysis on this topic,” she noted. “So, it’s not only a problem on our university campuses. This is a problem that is pervasive across the United States more generally, which is that even constructive criticism of Israel often evokes negative reactions.” Telhami noted that a November 2023 poll he helped conduct for the University of Maryland and George Washington University found that 82 percent of scholars feel the need to self-censor when discussing Israel-Palestine. Of those feeling a need to censor themselves, 81 percent limited their criticisms of Israel, while 11 percent censored criticisms of Palestinians. ■
Gaza Emerge ency Donate Now! www.mecaforpeac o e.org/gaza
MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN’S ALLIANCE
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United Nations Report Continued from page 19
Hamas attack. It has yet to share the evidence with anyone else, like the long list of Israeli allegations that the West thinks would be impolite to question. The U.N. fired the accused staff without sharing any evidence and promptly paid for its cowardice. The usual Anglo-West suspects announced a suspension of funding for UNRWA, the main source of sustenance in the beleaguered ghetto, in flat defiance of ICJ orders to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. None of them even hinted they would stop military support for Israel and its continuing acts of genocide. But Israel is charged with genocide on the world’s highest legal stage. It sticks and stinks, it is reputational skunk spray. ■
The Gaza I Loved Continued from page 26
they’re foraging through the rubble of what remains of their houses. Since the war began, I didn’t dare phone anyone in Gaza. I was afraid that none of my small circle of friends and acquaintances there was left alive. And if they were, what would I say to them? To hang on? To be strong? In the best-case scenario, they are all uprooted, with nothing left to their name. I think about them a lot. Is there any chance that Munir and Sa’id, two dedicated taxi drivers who are dear to my heart, are still alive? Munir, from Beit Lahiya, recently recovered from a stroke. The last time we spoke, he asked me to try to arrange a work permit for him in Israel, despite his partial paralysis. He could work as a translator for laborers, he suggested. I haven’t heard from Sa’id in a long time. I loved Gaza. Every visit there was a unique experience. The Gazans are different from the West Bank Palestinians. Up until 16 years ago, this was a very warm, compassionate community, a courageous one, with a feeling of solidarity and, of course, one familiar with suffering. In all my years of visiting Gaza, I met not one “savage” or “monster.” I have no idea what the 16 years of the
blockade did to it. Now the war is killing it for good. It’s not hard to guess what will grow in Gaza in its memory. ■
Retaliation? Revenge? Continued from page 31
ing what came to be called “the Dahiya Doctrine,” typically portraying Israeli violence as targeted at places from which attacks on Israeli originated: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which shots will be fired in the direction of Israel. We will wield disproportionate power and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases.” As even the Israeli military has noted, the Dahiya Doctrine was operational in Israel’s response to the Hamas surprise attack on Oct. 7, and some mainstream media commentators have noted that the Dahiya Doctrine seems to have been applied to the full in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, as in other attacks on the region since 2006. The use of the Dahiya Doctrine will prove futile, like all previous attempts to quell Palestinian resistance, which will persist until a political settlement acceptable to the Palestinian people is achieved. ■
just a baby then. He should be 29 now. Did he survive? He needed a heart transplant. The odds that he got one aren’t great. Farid Tartur, from the Bureij refugee camp, is probably no longer alive. His house is surely no longer standing. (Advertisement) Back in 1995, he came to the hospital with his baby Yasser, who was in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant. He’d heard that there was an Israeli doctor in the hospital and thought that maybe he would save his son. He had no other way to save him. Are father and son still Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a grassroots alive? I highly doubt it. community-based Palestinian health organization, founded in The children and babies of the 1979 by Palestinian doctors, needs your support today. summer of 1995 are now Hamas Visit www.pmrs.ps to see our work in action. fighters. What other possibilities and opportunities did they have in Visit www.friendsofpmrs.org to support our work and donate. life? They were born into occupation and grew up under the blockMail your U.S. Tax-Deductible check to our American Foundation: ade, with no chance of anything. Maybe right now they are fighting Friends of PMRS, Inc against the army that invaded the PO Box 450554 • Atlanta, GA 31145 remains of their land after their comrades committed the masFor more information call: (404) 441-2702 or e-mail: fabuakel@gmail.com sacre in southern Israel, or maybe MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Congress Watch
Congress Doubles Down on Familiar Targets
STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI
By Julia Pitner
Activists write messages calling for a ceasefire on the sidewalk outside of Sen. Alex Padilla’s (D‐CA) San Francisco office, on Dec. 16, 2023. The chalked messages included: “Killing children is not self‐defense,” “Children should be in school not in a graveyard,” “Nurses say stop the bombing of hospitals” and “No $ for genocide.” PUBLISHED 36 years ago, Blaming the Victims, by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, demonstrated with clarity and precision how the consistent denial of the historical truth about the Palestinians by Western governments and mainstream media resulted in an impasse in Middle East politics. In the volume’s introduction, Said implored people to keep talking about Palestine, perhaps hoping that honest attempts to redress the suppression and distortion of the truth could lead to a more rational political future in Palestine. He was partly right, as the last few months have shown that at the grassroots level people around the world have listened and learned. The same cannot be said of the U.S. Congress. On Nov. 7, the House passed H.Res. 845, censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Julia Pitner is director of programs and op‐ erations at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, DC. 40
Democrats who voted with Republicans cited their unease with her use of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” saying it was tantamount to calling for Israel’s destruction. Ironically, ministers in Israel’s government use the same slogan as part of their ethnic cleansing agenda. The day the resolution passed, the death toll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza reached 10,500, including an estimated 4,324 children. In the House, members have introduced several pieces of legislation to protect Israel and punish Palestinians. On Oct. 30, H.R. 6118 (“To prohibit funding for the United Nations Human Rights Council until it condemns Hamas,” aka the “Stand with Israel Act”) was introduced by Rep. Anna Luna (R-FL) and 21 cosponsors, all Republican except for Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL). It was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. On Jan. 12, 2023, H.R. 340, the “Hamas
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International Financing Prevention Act” was introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) and 31 bipartisan cosponsors. The legislation passed in the House under suspension of the rules by a vote of 363-46 on Nov. 1. In its original form, the bill included a humanitarian exception to ensure the flow of aid into Gaza. However, that exception was removed during the mark-up of the bill in committee. In objecting to that removal, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) said, “I unequivocally condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel…However, there is a distinction between Hamas and the innocent Palestinians it holds captive in Gaza, and we must legislate with that understanding.” Mast said he believes “any assistance should be slowed down” and argued that no one can distinguish between innocent Palestinians and Hamas. A bill that was introduced in May by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and 34 bipartisan cosponsors, H.R. 3266 (“To require the secretary of state to submit annual reports reviewing the curriculum used by the Palestinian Authority,” aka the “Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act”), was dusted off and brought to the floor, where it passed in a voice vote. The legislation effectively codifies the argument that Palestinians’ negative feelings about and toward Israel and Zionism are caused by their textbooks, with no acknowledgment of the lived experience of occupation. In a bid to stifle pro-Palestinian protests supporting the people of Gaza, H. Amdt. 781 to H.R. 5894 was introduced on Nov. 14 by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY). The amendment targets university funding by prohibiting funds to “colleges and universities that authorize, facilitate, provide funding for or otherwise support any event promoting anti-Semitism on campus.” The bill notes that it adopts the definition of antiSemitism propagated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which conflates Zionism, Israel and Judaism. The amendment passed by a recorded vote of 373–54. MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Introduced on Nov. 14 by Reps. David Kustoff (R-TN) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) with seven bipartisan sponsors, H.R. 6408 aims “to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.” Specifically, the bill aims to revoke the tax-exempt status of non-profits supporting Hamas, as stated in the press release. However, U.S. charitable organizations (like all other U.S. entities) are already barred by law from providing material support for Hamas, due to its designation as a terrorist organization. However, this bill may enable a new category of legal harassment targeting NGOs that engage with Palestinians or on Palestinian issues. This new legislation could potentially represent a powerful weapon for politically motivated pro-Israel actors to harass NGOs by filing costly but ultimately frivolous lawsuits (known as SLAPP suits). It was referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. Meanwhile, Congress has shown little interest in investigating U.S. non-profit groups that raise funds to support violent settler groups in the West Bank, or those that support the Israeli army, which has been credibly accused of conducting a genocide in Gaza. H. Res. 894, “Strongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world,” passed the House on Dec. 5 by a vote of 311-14, with 92 voting “present.” The bill referenced the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and it described the slogan “from the river to the sea” as “a rallying cry for the eradication of the state of Israel and the Jewish people” and “firmly states that antiZionism is anti-Semitism.” The bill was sponsored by Reps. David Kustoff (R-TN) and Max Miller (R-OH). Voting “nay” on the resolution, Rep. Jerrold (Jerry) Nadler (DNY) stated that it “implicitly compares some peaceful protesters with the Jan. 6 rioters and insurrectionists. More problematically, the resolution suggests that all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. That is either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong.” The bill was referred to the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees. In a similar vein, H.R. 6578 (“To establish the Commission to Study Acts of AntiSemitism in the United States”) was introMARCH/APRIL 2024
duced on Dec. 4 by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) and 28 cosponsors (including five Democrats). The commission would be set up to investigate the facts and causes of anti-Semitism, examine and evaluate evidence developed by relevant federal, state and local governments regarding the facts and circumstances of anti-Semitic attacks within the U.S., and report to the president and Congress regarding its findings, conclusions and recommendations for legislation or administrative actions. The bill, supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), would create a new congressional body that would have broad subpoena authority to compel Americans to testify and produce “evidence” to the appointed commission members. Those called cannot invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. This bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
THE SENATE WAS EQUALLY ACTIVE Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced S. 3174 (“To prohibit aid that will benefit Hamas,” aka the “Stop Support for Hamas Act”) on Oct. 31. This bill would bar any funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), prohibit any Economic Support Funds to Gaza or the West Bank until the secretary of state certifies that Israel has eradicated Hamas and every other terrorist organization from Gaza, and amend (Advertisement)
Send your story ideas, responses to features and copy requests (with $5) to: Capitol Hill Citizen 1209 National Press Building, Washington, DC 20045 Editor: Russell Mokhiber Phone: (202) 656-7660 Email: editor@capitolhillcitizen.com Find us on the web at: www.capitolhillcitizen.com
existing law to bar any aid that directly or indirectly could benefit Hamas. It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. A similar bill, S. 3166 (“Hamas Sanctions Act”) would also bar “official United States government business from being conducted in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.” It was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) the day before with no cosponsors. Protests and dissent on campuses also drew the attention of the Senate. On Nov. 1, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced S. 3184, “Ending Subsidies for Pro-Terrorist Activity on Campus Act,” with no cosponsors. Notably, this legislation would in effect require the legal enforcement of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, including its examples of criticism of Israeli policies. S. 3493, the “UNRWA Reform Act of 2023,” described as a bill “to require certification prior to obligation of funds for United Nations Relief and Works Agency,” was introduced on Dec. 13 by Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Braun (R-IN). It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. In addition to the legislative actions against Palestinians and supporting Israel, Iran has repeatedly been accused of supporting and directing groups who are acting against Israel and the U.S. No fewer than 12 legislative measures to increase sanctions on Iran have been proposed by various members in Congress, who, together with Israel, continue to imply that Iran had a hand in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. As South Africa presented its case against Israel in the International Court of Justice and the Palestinian death toll continued to climb, Congress focused on letters to the administration. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s continued opposition to a Palestinian state, unwillingness to change war tactics and his cabinet members’ demands to resettle Gaza are causing some discomfort, especially among Democratic Senate and House members. A growing number of Democratic lawmakers are pushing Biden to put more pressure on Israel by using existing U.S. laws, such as the Leahy laws linking sales of weapons to their use, as Congress considers passing an additional $14-plus billion in aid to Israel. Undoubtedly, congressional and federal moves will be influenced by a central fact: this is an election year. ■
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Special Report
Biden “Playing with Fire” by Redesignating Yemen’s Houthis as “Terrorists”
PHOTO BY OSAMAH YAHYA/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours and Joseph Stepansky
Iran‐backed Houthi rebels take part in a demonstration against the United States and Israel on Jan. 29, 2024 in Sana’a, Yemen amid growing tensions between the U.S. and the Houthis following the latter’s operations in the Red Sea. LESS THAN A MONTH after taking office in January 2021, President Joe Biden lifted two “terrorist” designations imposed by his predecessor, Donald Trump, against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. It was one of his first major foreign policy decisions. At the time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the move came in “recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.” The United Nations, as well as humanitarian groups and U.S. lawmakers, had warned the “terrorist” designations could interrupt the flow of aid to the country. Now, almost exactly three years later, the Biden administration is reimposing one of the designations against the Houthis, declaring
Jillian Kestler‐D'Amours has reported from across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in South and North America, Asia and Europe. Her work covers immigration, refugees, political conflict and human rights issues. Joseph Stepansky is a reporter and producer for Al Jazeera covering U.S. foreign policy, human rights and conflict. He was previously a staff reporter at the New York Daily News, where he covered cops, crime and the people caught in between. Reprinted from Al Jazeera with permission. 42
them to be a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist group” (SDGT) amid a series of attacks in the Red Sea. And once again, rights advocates and political analysts are sounding the alarm over the negative effects the decision may have on Yemeni civilians. Many also question whether the designation will succeed in pushing the Houthis to end their attacks. “I’m very concerned about the devastating consequences for ordinary people in Yemen,” said Afrah Nasser, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, who previously worked as a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. Nasser said that the designation risks deepening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, which has experienced a years-long war between the Houthis and a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. More than half of the Yemeni population—18.2 million people—is in need of assistance, according to the U.N., as the country reels from an economic crisis, rising costs, mass displacement and hunger. “The ordinary Yemeni family today is suffering because of both the Houthi domestic policies and also the international community policies
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in Yemen, such as this [U.S.] designation that we heard today,” Nasser said. “Yemenis are caught between two fires.”
RED SEA ATTACKS In a statement on Jan. 17, 2024, Blinken said the SDGT designation came in response to Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. “This designation seeks to promote accountability for the group’s terrorist activities. If the Houthis cease their attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the United States will reevaluate this designation,” the top U.S. diplomat said. The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control large swaths of Yemen, began firing missiles at Israel and attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea shortly after the war in Gaza began in October. The group pledged to target Israellinked vessels as part of an effort to pressure the country’s government to end its Gaza bombardment and allow more humanitarian aid deliveries into the coastal Palestinian enclave. It later expanded the threat to any commercial vessels travelling to and from Israel along the arterial trade route off Yemen’s coast. The attacks led shipping companies to suspend operations in the Red Sea and drew condemnation from the U.S. and its allies. Washington launched a naval coalition to protect commercial vessels in December, and it also carried out several strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in January in what observers called a “dangerous” escalation. The Biden administration defended its decision to reimpose the SDGT designation on the Houthis, saying there would be “carve-outs” to protect aid to Yemen. “Today’s designation targets the Houthis, not the Yemeni people,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in a press conference. When asked about how any related sanctions would impact negotiations with the Houthis, Kirby responded firmly: “There’s no negotiations. There’s not a bargaining chip. It’s a way of holding the Houthis accountable.” But experts cast doubt on whether the MARCH/APRIL 2024
SDGT designation would lead the Houthis to stop their attacks in the Red Sea, as the administration suggested. “It seems highly unlikely to have any positive effect on the behavior of the Houthis,” said Brian Finucane, a senior U.S. program adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank. “I think it’s a form of do-something-ism,” he said. The reimposition of the SDGT designation, he added, is a reflection of Washington’s refusal to recognize that recent Houthi attacks are linked to the war in Gaza. “The Biden administration has put itself in a box...where it doesn’t have good policy options.”
THE DESIGNATION An SDGT designation focuses primarily on the finances of an individual or a group. In this case, it will freeze the Houthis’ assets in the U.S. and prohibit American citizens from having any financial dealings with the group. And while “civil and criminal penalties may be assessed for violations,” the designation is more narrow in scope than the second label that the Trump administration had imposed on the Houthis: that of “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO). That label makes it a serious crime to provide support to a blacklisted group. “This [SDGT designation] is sort of a minimal: restricting access to funds from abroad and access to international markets. These are things that Houthis don’t have and never had. They don’t own stock on the New York Stock Exchange,” said Nabeel Khoury, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. Nevertheless, Khoury said that the Houthis are unlikely to make a distinction between an SDGT or FTO designation and will see the decision as an affront that could lead to further escalation. Hours after the designation was announced, the Houthis said they fired “naval missiles” at an American ship in the Gulf of Aden. U.S. Central Command later confirmed the U.S.-owned and -operated Genco Picardy was struck, causing some damage but no injuries. “It’s really baffling what this administration is engaged in. I don’t think there’s much
thought that went into this,” Khoury said. “This designation is more like an insult. It’s the old glove in the face, slap someone with your glove. You’re sort of challenging, but not really hurting them.” Nasser also warned that the designation could further embolden the Houthis and “contribute in radicalizing some parts of the population and strengthen the Houthi recruitment system.”
LEVEL OF UNCERTAINTY FOR YEMENIS Yet while the SDGT designation is “narrower” than an FTO, the Biden administration is aware “that these sanctions could make things worse for the people of Yemen,” said Finucane. That’s because financial institutions and humanitarian organizations “are likely to be very cautious about engaging with the Houthis in Yemen,” particularly until clear rules around the re-designation are laid out, Finucane explained. On Jan. 17, the Biden administration said it is “taking significant steps to mitigate any adverse impacts this designation may have on the people of Yemen.” The decision will come into effect in 30 days, Blinken’s statement said, during which time the administration will consult with aid organizations and other stakeholders. The U.S. Department of Treasury also is expected to publish licenses “authorizing certain transactions related to the provision of food, medicine and fuel, as well as personal remittances, telecommunications and mail, and port and airport operations on which the Yemeni people rely.” But that hasn’t dampened fears the designation will affect Yemenis negatively. “This designation would add another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” Scott Paul, associate director of peace and security at Oxfam America, told Al Jazeera in a written statement. “The Biden administration is playing with fire, and we call on them to avoid this designation immediately and prioritize the lives of Yemenis now.” ■
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Special Report
Spying for Israel: India’s Qatar Eight
PHOTO BY ISMAEL ADNAN YAQOOB/ANADOLU VIA GETTY IMAGES
By Stasa Salacanin
People enjoy the sunset in Doha, Qatar on Jan. 13, 2024. ALTHOUGH QATAR’S Court of Appeal reduced the death sentences for eight former Indian Navy personnel in connection with an alleged case of espionage on behalf of Israel, it remains unclear how this affair will affect Qatar-India relations. The incident came at a sensitive time for the entire Middle East and beyond amid the Israeli brutal siege of Gaza and war against Hamas, in which Qatar has played a crucial diplomatic mediation role in the hostage crisis as well as in securing humanitarian aid for Gaza’s civilian population. Eight Indian nationals, some of whom were high-ranked retired navy officers, were arrested in August of 2022 in Doha. All of
them worked for the consulting company Al Dahra, which was reportedly advising the Qatari government on the acquisition of submarines. On Oct. 26, 2023, the navy officers were sentenced to death by Qatar’s Court of First Instance. Meanwhile, the Al Dahra company was shuttered and the company website was deactivated. The verdict deeply shocked India. Even though the death sentence was later dropped, the spying saga could potentially disrupt bilateral relations between Qatar and India, with much to lose for both sides.
Stasa Salacanin is a widely published author and analyst focusing on the Middle East and Europe. He produces in‐depth analysis of the region’s most pertinent issues for regional and international publi‐ cations including the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, Middle East Mon‐ itor, The New Arab, Gulf News, Al Bawaba, Qantara, Inside Arabia and many more.
Qatar plays an essential role in India’s energy security; it is the biggest supplier to India of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in addition to polyethylene, ammonia, urea, ethylene and propylene imports. Qatar has also spent more than $450 million in foreign direct investment (FDI) in India. In 2021–2022, their bilateral trade stood
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at $15.03 billion, and India was among Qatar’s top four export destinations and top three sources of imports in 2021. Moreover, Indians are by far the largest expat community in Qatar; almost 800,000 migrant workers not only significantly contribute to the Qatari economy, but also constitute an important source of income for India, as do the 6,000 Indian companies operating in Qatar. The countries have also developed close defense cooperation. They signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2008, which was extended for five years in 2018.
WAS INDIA SPYING FOR ISRAEL? Given their close and friendly relations, the detention, trial and sentencing of the former Indian naval officers, dubbed “India’s Qatar Eight,” did come as a sudden and unexpected challenge. Some analysts speculate that the latest events may be related to the fact that India has become the largest buyer of Israel’s military equipment. However, Dr. Kadira Pethiyagoda, a former Brookings Institution fellow, diplomat and visiting scholar at Oxford University thinks that this is unlikely as Israel needs India to buy its military equipment more than India needs Israel’s equipment, particularly as it seeks to build a domestic defense industry. Although many of the details remain unknown, a few important points related to this case have been identified by Muddassir Quamar, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is an expert on India’s relations with the Middle East, and societies in the Arabian Gulf, political Islam, and Middle East strategic affairs. He pointed out that “there are little details available regarding the nature of the allegations against them, the evidence of their involvement and to what extent they were working in tandem with the Israeli agencies.” Nevertheless, the issue has acquired public importance and generated strong public opinion in India. India is working diplomatically through its forMARCH/APRIL 2024
eign office and the Indian mission in Doha to seek consular access to the Indian nationals, to accumulate as many details as possible about the case and to reduce the sentencing. Given the importance of the matter, the political channels for finding an amicable resolution might also be active. He further noted that “the Indian nationals are veterans and not in the service of the Indian military or the government of India. In other words, they were working in Qatar and with Dahra Global in their personal capacity.” Hence, “the accusation against them does not directly/indirectly affect the relations between the two governments,” he told the Washington Report. In a similar vein, Dr. Pethiyagoda told the Washington Report that if Indian nationals were involved in espionage, he does not think they were acting with the backing of the Indian state. While “it is highly likely that Israel was and is seeking to spy inside Qatar,” he thinks that “India's leadership is aware of the changing power balance in the Middle East, which is not in Israel’s favor.” As a rising power, India has nothing to gain from using its nationals to serve Israeli interests, he emphasized.
WILL THERE BE CONSEQUENCES? It is also unclear how these events may affect their bilateral ties. In Quamar’s view, the ongoing issue does not immediately affect the bilateral ties in a big way. However, depending on the outcome, it can affect public opinion, and accordingly the policy direction to the extent expected in democracies, but it is unlikely to disrupt the bilateral ties, especially in petroleum imports, movement of human resources and non-oil trade. Dr. Pethiyagoda noted that both countries share a mutually beneficial relationship in many ways. “Qatar needs Indian labor as well as India needing the remittances.” Moreover, given that Indians make up a plurality in Qatar, Doha “will not take any sweeping measures against Indian workers,” in his view. This is espe-
cially the case as Israel itself draws in more Indian migrant workers. However, in Quamar’s opinion, the incident may affect “the military, defense and tech sectors, meaning that Qatar and other Gulf states might become wary of employing Indian nationals/veterans in sensitive tech/military/defense projects in the future.” Other than that possible wariness, there may be no serious disruption in Qatar-India ties if the matter is resolved through diplomatic channels or additional judicial processes. The spying saga may also negatively impact Qatar-Israeli ties, which have never been particularly close and amicable. Although the two countries hosted trade offices from 1995 to 2000, Qatar does not recognize Israel, nor does it have diplomatic relations with it. On the other hand, Doha’s provision of financial aid to Gaza has always been coordinated with Israel and its recent diplomatic efforts to end the hostages crisis in Gaza have been essential. Qatar has the most autonomous foreign policy of all Gulf states and the most fraught relationship with Israel already. According to Dr. Pethiyagoda, “there is very little trust to be lost.” He also noted that the wholesale and irrevocable destruction of Israel’s reputation in the eyes of the public in almost every country is significantly due to Qatar’s Al Jazeera broadcasting the war on Gaza directly, without the bias of Western media. He identified one consequence of this: “Qatar could still stymie efforts by Israel to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia by Doha acting as an example of integrity and thus embarrassing Riyadh in front of its own public.” Therefore, the current conflagration is likely to strain Israeli-Qatari contacts further. But Qatar and Egypt remain the only two actors who can have some meaningful mediatory role amidst the Gaza crisis. This means that despite tensions, both Israel and the United States will have to coordinate with Qatar to find solutions to end the war and to get all the Israeli hostages released. ■
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Special Report
Libya: No Country for Young Men
PHOTO BY MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
By Mustafa Fetouri
Young Libyan men play foosball in Tripoli’s Martyrs’ Square on Jan. 19, 2024. LAST FEBRUARY marked 13 years since Libya was, literally, handed back to the United Nations by the U.N. itself. Many in Libya, particularly the younger generations, see the U.N.’s role to have evolved to that of a manager who has little to offer in terms of solutions, focusing, instead, on maintaining the status quo. The U.N.’s relationship to Libya goes back to the establishment of the country as we know it today. The winners of World War II divided the colonies of the defeated countries among themselves, one of which was Libya. To settle their disagreements about the fate of this former Italian colony, the big powers decided to hand it over to the recently established U.N., which in turn led Libya to independence.
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written ex‐ tensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues. He has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafafetouri@ hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri. 46
Decades later, the U.N. once again assumed a key role in Libya’s fate. In February 2011 young Libyans took to the streets, demanding reform, better living conditions and jobs. Expectations were sky high that once the Qaddafi regime was overthrown, Libya would become paradise on the southern bank of the Mediterranean or the Dubai of North Africa. Actually, “we want Libya to be like Dubai” was the secret catch phrase spreading like wild fire across social media platforms as a call to join what was called “the 17 February Revolution”—the Libyan version of the Arab Spring. The role of the U.N. was intended to be limited in scope. However, it has mushroomed to touch almost every aspect of life. By October 2011 and with helping “humanitarian” hands from NATO and others, including the United Arab Emirates (which many Libyans simply call Dubai), Col. Muammar Qaddafi was toppled and brutally murdered, and a new Libya, or so it was hoped, slowly emerged. Jubilant Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the top humanitarian “helping” hands, laughingly commented after hearing
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the news of Qaddafi’s death: “we came, we saw, he died.”
WHERE IS THE LIBYA PARADISE TODAY? Salem, a recent university graduate who is jobless, told the Washington Report that what Libyans did not realize in 2011 was that “indeed Qaddafi was gone but apparently he took the country with him.” Today hundreds of thousands of young people, like Salem, are unemployed despite the success of The Revolution, which held promise of a leadership role for young people. According to the U.N., Libya has a population of around 7 million people; 1.1 million of them are between the ages of 15 and 24 years, and around 51.4 percent of individuals in that age group are unemployed.The median age in Libya is 26.8 years. The official overall unemployment rate in the country is 19.6 percent—other sources claim it is higher than 21 percent—and it is expected to increase in the next two years. Job creation in the country is on the increase but it is misleading because 85 percent of those who work are in the public sector. According to Libya’s finance ministry, some 2.1 million people work for the government, and their annual salaries are estimated to be 53.8 percent of the country’s budget. In neighboring Tunisia, for example, only 347,000 work in the public sector serving over 12 million people. Oil provides 97 percent of Libya’s revenue, but it is neither a stable commodity nor secure; it is vulnerable to closures by armed militias and tribesmen with grievances. Earlier this year, angry tribesmen blockaded the Sharara oil field in the south, one of the biggest with production capacity of 300,000 barrels/day. The standoff lasted for weeks.
RECRUITING POOL FOR MILITIAS Many young people faced with the prospect of unemployment join the armed militias. Three reasons drove Hussein into one such militia: having a job, top pay and social prestige that come with having a gun and being feared by peers. Hussein (who does MARCH/APRIL 2024
not want his family name published for security reasons) said he decided to leave the militia because “I found myself fighting for unworthy causes.” Instead he chose to sell carpets in his uncle’s shop south of Tripoli. He left his militia during a fight between two rival militias which erupted in Tripoli in August 2023. Since 2011 successive governments have also, indirectly, encouraged people like Hussein to join armed groups by designating some groups as legitimate governmental law enforcement bodies.
POLITICAL BLIND SPOT Young Libyans have minimal participation in their country’s affairs because youth, in general, are looked upon as lacking leadership qualities and experience. Although civil organizations have mushroomed over the last decade, they are still relatively young, lack coherent strategies and are starved for funding; this forces them to accept foreign donations, risking contravening national laws that prohibit foreign funding. This, and more, make most civil organizations claiming to represent certain youth sections irrelevant, and they generally do not have a say in the country’s major issues like the transition to democracy and gender equality. Apart from the occasional events organized by the U.N. mission, young Libyans hardly appear on the national screen. Huge numbers of them find solace in venting their anger and frustration through social media; young people make up 58 percent of all users and most have more than one Facebook account. Most political parties fail to present any new national manifestos beyond the prevailing political polarization that tends to classify people as either “for or against the February 17 revolution,” says a social science researcher who wished to remain anonymous. This kind of “over polarized political atmosphere” denies young people the right to think freely and be creative in expressing their vision for the future.
BRAIN DRAIN Libya is experiencing its worst brain drain in the last 30 years. Migration out of the country is rising among highly qualified young
people, including entrepreneurs, physicians and engineers. Many had already been living abroad before the revolution because of “the oppressive nature” of the Qaddafi regime. Thirteen years after his death, they still do not want to return simply because “the country now is more oppressive and risky than it used to be,” commented a Dubai-based Libyan surgeon. Some studies say that 8.9 percent of all Libyan physicians are working in the U.S., UK, Canada and the Gulf states. This amounts to a “brain drain at the time when the country needs everyone” said Tripoli-based human resources expert Ali Zeinaddin.
FUTURE OUTLOOK The country is still politically divided with two competing governments. Hopes are slim for elections this year, the reunification of government institutions and tackling youth issues. The U.N.’s mission in Libya of “stabilizing the country” seems aspirational after 13 years of work. At the same time the country’s younger generation is lost and has little hope for a better future anytime soon. It appears the world body was more successful in helping Libya gain independence 72 years ago than it has been in trying to help it find stability since 2011. ■
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Canada Calling
Raising Awareness of Iranian Women’s Struggles By Candice Bodnaruk
PHOTOS COURTESY HAJAR MORADI
English, Farsi, French, Kurdish and Turkish that are written on colored fabric squares and then stitched to the banner. The letters are made from braided fabric strings meant to symbolize women’s hair strands. Messages, written in both English and French, include “Stop the Injustice in Iran,” “Stay Strong,” “Solidarity from Women in Toronto,” and “Canadian Women Stand With Iranian Women.” “The banner’s main message and purpose is to raise awareness about the ongoing struggles Iranian, Kurdish and Afghan women face in their tireless pursuit of rights and freedom,” Moradi said, adding that she hopes the banner fosters solidarity by highlighting the shared challenges women encounter worldwide. Moradi explained that her work is also rooted in specific life experiences and struggles. As a child she lived through an 8-year-long war, and as a girl grew up fighting for her rights as a woman in Iran. She also experienced depression. “I found salvation in making and creating art,” she explained. For Moradi, who is also a filmmaker, art offers powerful opportunities to express our common humanity. Artist Hajar Moradi and (ABOVE) her “Woman, Life, Freedom” banner on display at If art is done right, she believes, it can change socithe Canadian Museum for Human Rights. ety. “As an artist, I focus on creating art that initiates conversations IRANIAN CANADIAN Hajar Moradi, the artist behind the “Woman, about identity, resilience and politics concerning being and belongLife, Freedom” banner, spoke with the Washington Report recently ing,” Moradi said, adding that her work focuses on themes such as to discuss what inspired her now-famous creation as well as her displacement, female strength and resilience in times of war and feminism and work to support Iranian women. “Woman, Life, Freeoppression, as well as gender identity in modern society. dom” is the English translation of Jin, Jiyan, Azadi, a slogan that When asked about the future of women’s rights in Iran, Moradi is became popular after the 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa optimistic, because courageous Iranian women are continuing to Amini, 22, who was arrested for violating Iran’s mandatory headscarf fight for their rights on a daily basis. “The resistance has become law. Moradi’s banner is currently on display in Winnipeg at the Canabold and a constant part of everyday life,” she concluded. When dian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). asked about the role of female artists in both the Iranian and CanaThe Iranian activist group Feminists for Jina carried the banner dian political scenes, she observed, “As an Iranian Canadian, I will in the Toronto International Women’s Day rally in March 2023. The echo the voice of the ongoing Jin, Jiyan, Azadi revolution of Iran. banner was also part of the Alt Pride march in June 2023. As an artist, I’ll try to do that through my art.” The banner is made up of more than 100 solidarity messages in
Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg. 48
MAKING THE NAKBA AN ISSUE IN WINNIPEG “I have no choice, I have to be an activist or die,” feminist anthropologist Eléonore Merza Bronstein said. She and her husband, Israeli video director Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, were in Winnipeg
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recently to discuss their book Nakba: The Struggle to Decolonize Israel as well as the NGO Zochrot, which Bronstein Aparicio founded in 2002. “Zochrot” means remembering in Hebrew and their life’s work is to educate Israelis about the Nakba and the Palestinian right of return. When they spoke in Winnipeg on their cross-Canada book tour in October, Israel’s current war on Gaza wasn’t even a month old, yet Merza Bronstein did not hesitate to say what is happening in Gaza is another Nakba. The couple’s visit to Winnipeg was co-sponsored by Independent Jewish Voices Winnipeg and Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba. Merza Bronstein, who was born in Paris, said one of the goals of Zionism is to build an unbreakable bond between Jews and Israel. She explained that Israel’s policy of raising children to join the army means Israel “is not a safe space.” When Israelis instruct their children to write letters to soldiers thanking them for their service because they don’t want to die like their grandparents did in the Holocaust, Israel is not a safe space, she said. Meanwhile, Eitan Bronstein Aparicio was born in Argentina but moved to Israel as a child with his Zionist parents to live on a kibbutz. At 18 he joined the Israeli army because at that time, he explained, there was no question of refusing to join. Eventually he began to question his own actions and in 1987, during the first intifada, he was sent to jail when he refused to participate. “But I was still part of the system, I didn’t refuse the army, I still continued as a reservist,” he explained, adding that it was in October 2000, during the second intifada, that he realized the main problem was Zionism itself and that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. Through Zochrot, the couple addresses Israelis in Hebrew about the Nakba and Palestinians’ right to return to their homeland. Merza Bronstein points out that Jews in Israel and North America listen to them because they are Jewish and Israeli— whereas they would not believe a Palestinian saying the same things. When Israelis MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Eléonore Merza Bronstein and Eitan Bronstein Aparicio founded De‐Colonizer, a research and art laboratory for social change. talk about the Nakba “it changes the conversation a little bit.” Part of Zochrot’s work involves posting signs with the original names of Palestinian villages, rivers and places next to Hebrew signs to remind and educate Israelis about the history of the land. Bronstein Aparicio explained that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, changed the names of every place in Palestine—even if it was just a small river, it was renamed with a Jewish name. “They erased in this way the history of so many places,” he said. In 2015, the couple also created a map that showed all the destroyed villages from 1948, and also municipalities destroyed after 1948, and in 1967, the additional destruction of Palestinian communities. In 2015 Bronstein Aparicio led a tour of Canada Park to show people the stones from destroyed Palestinian villages used in the park. Canada Park was built in 1967 over three destroyed Palestinian villages. He noted there are more than 2,000 names of Canadian donors to the park posted there. At one point a visitor who was on the tour found his own name on the wall and took a photo of it. They also conducted a survey of 500 Jewish Israelis, using an official polling institute. “Have you heard of the Nakba?” was one of the main questions and 48 per-
cent of people interviewed had never heard the term, yet 52 percent did know the word and believed it meant Remembrance Day for Palestinians. Merza Bronstein noted that before the year 2000 if you entered the word Nakba in a search engine in Israel, no results would have come up. Today, many more people are aware of the Nakba. “Each one of us has a responsibility to acknowledge this tragedy,” Bronstein Aparicio asserted, adding that many non-Zionist Jews left Israel when they learned the truth about the Nakba and Israel’s colonial Zionist project. The couple’s belief in social justice and equality was one of the main reasons they also eventually also left Israel. Merza Bronstein added it is important people realize the Nakba didn’t start in 1948 and didn’t stop in 1948. “What we are seeing today in Gaza, is a Nakba,” she explained. People can’t understand what happened on Oct. 7 without addressing and understanding what has happened over the last 75 years. She said Israel has not only failed to provide Israeli Jews with safe space but has failed Jews everywhere, including in North America. She added that each time Israel conducts a massacre, there is a rise in antiSemitism. “We know it, we are very worried and that is partly why we can’t just shut up. When you are anti-racist activists you can’t remain silent,” she said. ■
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MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM
The Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR) at Rutgers Law School hosted a virtual panel on Dec. 14, 2023, to launch its report, “Presumptively Anti-Semitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the PalestineIsrael Discourse.” The study examines how an “Islamophobia industry” of think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and lobbying groups weaponizes anti-Semitism to smear Muslim supporters of Palestine as inherently prejudiced. Professor of law and CSRR director Sahar Aziz moderated the discussion, which included Mitchell Plitnick, president of ReThinking Foreign Policy, and Jonathan Matz, a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) board member. Although the report was mostly complete before Oct. 7, it still addresses a fundamental question regarding Israel’s catastrophic war on Gaza, Aziz said: “How is it that the United States can so easily support Israel in what has been very clearly termed, even by allies, as the most devastating military attack of the 21st century?” The report found that Islamophobia plays a substantial role in policymaking, identifying three ways that it shapes U.S. foreign policy: “1) restricting open debate about unconditional U.S. support for Israel, notwithstanding documented and systematic violations of international law by the Israeli government; 2) perpetuating racist tropes that Muslims and Arabs innately hate Jews; and 3) discrediting the Palestinian people from realizing their full civil, political, national and human rights.” Plitnick noted that U.S. perceptions of the Islamic world turned hostile during the latter half of the Cold War, due in part to the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as well as the pervasive caricaturing of Palestinians as terrorists, which bolstered support for Israel. The result was a bigoted view of the region, best epitomized by the “clash of civilizations” theory, Plitnick said. 50
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Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse
People in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim‐majority country, take part in a rally in support of Palestine outside of the United States Embassy in Jakarta, on Jan. 13, 2024. Popularized by political scientist Samuel Huntington’s book of the same name, this narrative gained traction among conservative policymakers by depicting “Western civilization battling a decidedly backward Islamic civilization,” Plitnick noted. Derided by Palestinian American academic Edward Said as “the purest invidious racism” and a “parody of Hitlerian science directed uniquely today against Arabs and Muslims,” Huntington’s theory nonetheless gained prominence when the 9/11 attacks, second intifada and war on terrorism galvanized Islamophobic sentiment in the United States. Islamophobia serves as a “policy funnel through which international and domestic alliances and coalitions are formed, whereby participants use Islam and Muslim subjectivities as the foil to array their varied political, economic and military interests,” according to Dr. Hatem Bazian, founder of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley. To that end, a loose network of neoconservative and Zionist lobbying firms, NGOs and think tanks utilized anti-Muslim stereotypes while advocating for U.S. military interventions in the Middle East and unequivocal support for Israel. Aziz asserted the network “had a profound influence on the [George W.] Bush
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administration’s foreign policy” and continues to hold sway in Washington. The foremost Islamophobic trope used to defame Muslim proponents of Palestinian liberation is the charge of antiSemitism, as some pro-Israel organizations conflate it with anti-Zionism. “We’ve seen Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee become much more central in redefining antiSemitism as support for Palestinian rights,” Plitnick noted. “We’ve gotten to a point where real anti-Semitism…has become marginalized and even made invisible. This new definition of Palestinian rights as being anti-Semitic has taken center stage.” The interminable controversies surrounding anti-Zionist terminology on college campuses further reflect this reality. Plitnick argued phrases such as “free Palestine,” “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” have been “manipulated cynically” to make Jewish students and parents feel threatened, “because these terms have been defined for them in ways that are not their real meanings.” Matz pointed out that some of the most vocal supporters of Israel are “people who make less and less effort to hide their own hostility toward American Jews,” such as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Plitnick called MARCH/APRIL JUNE/JULY 2024 2020
Stefanik (a staunch ally of Israel who interrogated university presidents in a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism) a “white nationalist” who promotes the “great replacement theory,” which the ADL defines as a “racist conspiracy.” Matz said “dispelling the myth that [Israel’s violent] actions are necessary for Jewish safety in any shape or form” is central to JVP’s mission. “The only way you can undermine Palestinian claims for justice and restitution is by setting up their basic lives as an inherent obstacle to Jewish safety or self-determination in a way that completely muddies the water of anti-Semitism.” —Jack McGrath
HUMAN RIGHTS Angela Davis on Black-Palestinian Solidarity Busboys and Poets hosted Palestine Week at its restaurants in the Washington, DC metro area Jan. 18-25, intended by CEO/founder Andy Shallal to “uplift Palestinian culture and humanity.” The events featured Palestinian author Laila El-Haddad, poets Zeina Azzam and Yaffa As, community organizer Linda Sarsour, ex-State Department official Josh Paul (who resigned over Washington’s “blind support” for Israel) and revolutionary activist Angela Davis. Davis, an eminent scholar and former political prisoner whose advocacy spans multiple fields, spoke with Shallal on Jan. 23 about the necessity of transnational solidarity with Palestine. “I can tell you for virtually all of my political life—and I think I became politically conscious about 60, 70 years ago—Palestine was always key to recognizing the globality of our struggles,” Davis said. “I first learned Palestine solidarity from my Jewish friends at Brandeis [University]. That was when I was awakened to what was happening.” In her opinion, “people who have the experience of the Holocaust in their families are the ones who give leadership to opposition to the genocidal assaults perpetrated by Israel,” she remarked, MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Palestinian artist Ayman Al‐Husari paints a mural in Gaza City, Gaza depicting George Floyd, on June 16, 2020. Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020. thanking “Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and the numbers of new radical Jewish organizations [that] are emerging in this period.” Recalling that Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, the Black Panther Party and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee supported Palestine, Shallal asked Davis about the “connection between Black power and Palestinian liberation.” “We could not have built an effective movement against racism in the United States if we did not also embrace internationalism, which meant not only supporting the many struggles for African liberation that were occurring on the continent but also standing with those who were struggling for justice and freedom for Palestine,” Davis replied. “As Black people, we have been beneficiaries of global solidarity since the era of slavery,” she noted, recounting abolitionists who “traveled around the world in order to invite people in other countries to express their solidarity with enslaved people of African descent,” which is how “the movement for Black freedom was internationalized.” Davis noted the practical and moral support Palestinians have given to Black Americans. Shallal added that “this
solidarity happened during Black Lives Matter and all the movements that were taking place in Ferguson, when Palestinian activists were actually sharing their experiences of how to deal with tear gas.” Davis, who documented the occurrence in Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, recollected, “The [use of] milk [to lessen the impact of tear gas on the eyes], which way to run, how to run with the wind and not against—there were all kinds of very practical suggestions that were forthcoming from Palestinian activists who were offering assistance during the Ferguson protests in 2014.” Davis emphasized the power of collective action, particularly when it transcends borders. “What people project onto me is the achievements of movements,” Davis asserted. “After all, my name first came to public attention when I was the target of the kind of repression that nobody felt could be challenged because the president of the U.S. called me a terrorist and said I should be executed.” During her persecution at the hands of President Richard Nixon, California Governor Ronald Reagan and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Davis reflected that “no one believed it would be possible to effectively challenge them, but people came together from all over the country
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and all over the world…I received letters from Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails offering their solidarity to me.” “I see myself as a symbol of the power of all the people who came together and demonstrated that the impossible was possible,” Davis attested. “As individuals, we are very weak, we really can’t accomplish very much of anything, but if we come together…we can change the world, we can bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and we can express our solidarity with our comrades in Palestine who want to see a world of freedom, justice and equality for all people.” —Jack McGrath
WAGING PEACE Keeping the U.S. Out of War in the Middle East The risk of another large-scale U.S. military intervention in the Middle East continues to rise, as Washington conducts airstrikes in Yemen, Iranianaligned militias attack U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, and Israel bombs Lebanon and Syria while sustaining its devastating assault on Gaza. Defense Priorities (DEFP) hosted a virtual panel on Jan. 16 to discuss how the United States can avert becoming entangled in an all-out regional war. DEFP fellow Daniel DePetris moderated the forum, which included Barbara Slavin, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center; Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director at DEFP; and Steven Simon, professor at the University of Washington and author of Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East. “No law says the U.S. is compelled to engage in combat on behalf of shipping, the international order, Israel, or some concept of establishing or re-establishing deterrence,” Friedman observed, warning that the Biden administration’s military actions across the region risk escalating out of control. He outlined “three potential avenues” that could lead to all-out conflict between the U.S. and Iran. 52
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A protester in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square raises a placard condemning the U.S military presence in Iraq, on Jan. 13, 2024. “One is getting into a war with Hezbollah on behalf of Israel,” Friedman said. “I worry that U.S. signals like sending an aircraft carrier [to the eastern Mediterranean Sea] and rhetorically backing Israel, which are presumably meant to deter Hezbollah’s escalation, might encourage Israel to be more aggressive in the expectation that we back them.” He pointed to the embattled U.S. troop presence in Syria and Iraq as a second avenue of potential escalation, given ongoing militia attacks targeting U.S. bases in those countries. Finally, Friedman cited “the potential for a much broader war with the Houthis” in Yemen, instigated by the U.S. “bombing them continually or maybe doing something even more aggressive.” Since Oct. 7, Iran-backed paramilitaries have launched more than 160 missile and drone strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The Biden administration routinely frames its retaliatory airstrikes as a means to “prevent them from attacking U.S. troops in the future,” DePetris noted, but “someone with an ounce of common sense” can see “that strategy clearly isn’t working.” Friedman explained that the efficacy of deterrence
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depends on “the politics of that group or country and the motivation they have for doing the thing you don’t want them to do.” In the case of Iraqi and Syrian militias, “I wouldn’t say that across the board everybody there is undeterrable by airstrikes, but clearly the main actors are not overly bothered,” he said. Nowhere is the failure of deterrence more evident than with the Houthis, who have continued to disrupt Red Sea commerce despite recurrent U.S. bombings. President Joe Biden acknowledged as much on Jan. 18 when asked if the airstrikes are working: “Well, when you say, ‘working’— are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.” U.S. airstrikes in Yemen are not only ineffective but actively counterproductive, Slavin asserted. “The Houthis are enjoying their newfound status as the greatest champion of the Palestinian cause outside of Palestine; we’re just doing them a favor,” she said. “Frankly, we were managing to shoot down pretty much all their drones and missiles before [bombing Yemen]. I think we should have confined ourselves to doing that and put our efforts into ending the war in Gaza, which is, after all, what is fueling all of this,” Slavin added. MARCH/APRIL 2024
As current U.S. policy toward the Houthis proves incapable of achieving deterrence, the Biden administration finds itself “in a situation where you either escalate or seem to back down,” Friedman said. The latter option is “very unpopular because people perceive the Houthis to be terrorists, which I don’t think is really true,” he contended. “They’re basically a state, and people think you don’t give terrorists or hostage-takers what they want, but the fact is we give states what they want when they use coercion regularly, and that’s a big part of international politics.” Friedman found the Houthis’ initial demands for a substantial increase in aid entering Gaza to be “very reasonable” and agreed that reaching a ceasefire should be Washington’s priority. —Jack McGrath
Consequences of the Escalating Red Sea Conflict On Jan. 18, the Gulf International Forum (GIF) conducted a virtual panel featuring GIF non-resident fellow Nabeel Khoury, the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Cinzia Bianco, the National Defense University’s David Des Roches and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies’ Abdulghani Al-Iryani. The group discussed the effectiveness of the U.S.-led conflict with the Houthis and its role in Israel’s war on Gaza. Khoury was pessimistic about the success of U.S. retaliation against the Houthis in response to the group’s targeting of commercial vessels in the Red Sea. “The recent strikes on Yemen…as well as the recent designation of the Houthis [as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group], by the admission of the U.S. national security advisor, will not deter the Houthis,” he said. He was also not convinced the U.S. has a master plan for its conflict with the Houthis. “What is the strategy here?” he asked. So far, he explained, the effects have been negative: the Houthis have made the U.S. an enemy, vowed to retaliate against U.S. assets and have become more integrated into the regional “axis of resistance.” MARCH/APRIL 2024
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A child receives humanitarian aid provided by the World Food Program in Taizz, Yemen, on Sept. 11, 2023. Taizz has a severe lack of water due to an ongoing Houthi water blockade of the government‐held city. Khoury also discussed the Biden administration’s ongoing plans to engage Israel and Saudi Arabia on diplomatic normalization, arguing that both parties “don’t care very much about Palestinian welfare.” He called this policy, “a pathetic way to think you are going to solve the Palestinian problem.” Meanwhile, the Saudis have been clear with the U.S. that they will not join international anti-Houthi maritime operations, since Riyadh has an understanding with the Houthis and Iran that Saudi assets and infrastructure will not be hit, Bianco said. Saudi Arabia has also been trying to extricate itself from the war in Yemen for years, with reports indicating the Houthis and the Saudis were close to agreeing on a ceasefire before Oct. 7. From the European perspective, Bianco said, regional stability is paramount. As such, “they don’t want to disrupt the SaudiIranian detente” and they “don’t want to disrupt the negotiations for ending the war in Yemen.” At the same time, she pointed out that Europe is economically impacted by instability in the Red Sea region, prompting several European countries to join the U.S-led strikes on Yemen, as well as launching their own maritime missions. Des Roches argued that while the ongoing U.S. attacks on Houthi targets are
not effectively deterring the group, they have impacted their military capabilities. “We have seen a deterioration in the ability of the Houthis to effectively target maritime traffic,” he said. He also noted that “the big loser out of all of this is Egypt,” which is struggling economically and missing out on the Suez Canal transit fees it relies on for hard currency. As to the Houthis’ motivations, Des Roches believes Gaza is just a pretext for the group to further its domestic agenda, allowing them to capitalize on popular support for Palestine while they continue to fight for power in Yemen. In January, Human Rights Watch noted that while the Houthis are taking aggressive action to confront Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the group is preventing water from reaching civilians in Taizz, Yemen’s third largest city, which is controlled by the official government. Al-Iryani suggested that the U.S.-Houthi conflict could be beneficial for Yemen’s future. Now that the Houthis have demonstrated their disruptive potential on behalf of the “axis of resistance,” Al-Iryani believes the U.S. and Saudi Arabia “will not allow the Houthis to become the dominant force in Yemen,” which will give Yemen a chance to have a “durable peace that will
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preserve the Yemeni state and keep it united.” —Alex Shanahan
On Dec. 13, 2023, the Middle East Institute (MEI) hosted a virtual panel discussion with Ambassador Edward Gabriel of the American Task Force on Lebanon, Firas Maksad of MEI, Patricia Karam of Freedom House and Lamia Moubayed Bissat of the Lebanese Ministry of Finance’s Institut des Finances Basil Fuleihan. The speakers considered Lebanon’s domestic problems as well as the conflict on its border with Israel. Maksad expressed concern that the titfor-tat strikes between Israel and Hezbollah cannot be contained. Noting the risk of miscalculation, Maksad believes Hezbollah does not fully appreciate Israel’s willingness to escalate the conflict on its northern border. He therefore predicted that “the chances of that border igniting in a much more significant way…are certainly more than 50 percent.” Indeed, Israel’s assassination of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri just outside of Beirut on Jan. 2 prompted greater fears of an allout war between Israel and Hezbollah. Maksad advocated for more U.S. diplomatic intervention to prevent further escalation, arguing that no other country has the power or track record to mediate between Israel and Lebanon. (The U.S. helped settle a maritime gas field dispute between Lebanon and Israel in Oct. 2022, although that deal was negotiated with the official government in Beirut, and not with Hezbollah, a powerful political party and militant group in Lebanon.) “There is almost daily, constant, persistent U.S. pressure on Israel not to open a second front in Lebanon,” Maksad said. “That, however, runs against the grain of the domestic political realities in Israel.” Israel is “itching to escalate” with Hezbollah, over the objections of the U.S., Gabriel added. “Israel does not seem to be taking the advice of the United States when it comes to this war.” It is unrealistic for Israel to demand that Hezbollah withdraw from the border with 54
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Lebanon’s Myriad Challenges Amid the Israel-Hamas War
People walk through the rubble of destroyed buildings following Israeli strikes on the town of Naqoura in southern Lebanon, on Jan. 4, 2024. Israel, as it has spent decades entrenching itself there, Maksad argued. “As long as Israel continues to undertake military action in Gaza, it will be difficult for Hezbollah to completely disengage and for the skirmishes on the border to come to an end,” he added. Meanwhile, Gabriel believes Iran, which is closely aligned with Hezbollah, “appears to not want to escalate” the conflict in a significant way. The consensus is that “any major escalation will be at their discretion, using Hezbollah.” Bissat warned that the fraught nature of Lebanon’s economy and politics means that a large-scale war with Israel could inflict catastrophic damage on the country. “If there is another war, Lebanon may not get the chance to recover,” she warned. “Lebanon would ultimately be collateral damage.” The country is completely dependent on external financing, which would hamper the country’s ability to rebuild, Bissat noted. Crises elsewhere also mean that Lebanon would likely struggle to access development assistance, she added. Karam noted that Lebanon has been without a president for over a year and under a caretaker government with limited powers. This political vacuum hampers the ability of the government to exert au-
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thority. Unsurprisingly, the government’s response to rising regional tensions has been “inept at best,” and it remains largely “irrelevant to the conflict,” she said. Despite calls from government officials to avoid war and escalation, no one is listening, she observed. While most of the country does not want a full-scale war with Israel, Hezbollah’s strategy of “riding the popular outrage” surrounding Gaza’s death toll has “bolstered its resistance credentials even beyond its traditional audience,” Karam explained. Meanwhile, Gabriel noted that the Lebanese Armed Forces have stood on the sidelines, which has led to Hezbollah “looking like the protector in the region.” Bissat reiterated the centrality of the U.S. to the conflict, suggesting that many in Lebanon are asking, “When will the U.S. be sufficiently outraged [about Israel’s war on Gaza] to insist and demand on the rule of law as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?” —Alex Shanahan
Violence and Forced Displacement Increase in the West Bank The Balfour Project and Sadaka, the Ireland Palestine Alliance, cohosted a webinar on Dec. 19, 2023 to examine the dire conditions Palestinians face in the MARCH/APRIL 2024
West Bank, particularly in Masafer Yatta, a region in the South Hebron Hills subjected to an Israeli lockdown and rampant settler violence. Even before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, 2023 marked the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, as 234 people were killed in just over nine months. Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 14, 2024, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and armed settlers killed an additional 339 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 88 children. Israel is also conducting “a massive sweep of arrests and arbitrary detentions” in the West Bank, with 5,835 Palestinians abducted since Oct. 7, stated Susan Power, head of legal research and advocacy at Al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group. “We’re witnessing a number of forcible transfer measures as well: the transfer or the removal of Palestinians from their homes through settler violence, through punitive house demolitions and various attacks on property.” The settler movement’s “creeping annexation” of the West Bank is a “continuation of the Nakba,” Power explained. “There are 700,000 settlers who are colonizing the West Bank…in the first six months of this year [2023], the Israeli government legalized 22 new settlements.” The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) found that incidents of settler-related violence occurred three times a day on average during the first eight months of 2023. Israeli officials have offered tacit to unequivocal support for the rampant incursions, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrating the murderers of a Palestinian teenager as “heroes” and distributing automatic rifles to settlers. Palestinians in Masafer Yatta already faced home demolitions, denial of water access, electricity shortages, arbitrary detentions and summary killings before Oct. 7, Owda Hathaleen, a human rights activist and English teacher based in the area, emphasized. The scope and frequency of Israeli persecution has drastically increased in recent months. MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Residents watch as an Israeli bulldozer demolishes a Palestinian home in the Umm Qasas area of Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank, on July 25, 2022. “Nowadays, they [the IOF] are raiding houses most every night,” including his residence. An IOF lockdown has separated the area’s 19 hamlets by closing off nearly all access between them, Hathaleen said. “All of the villages now are not connected, all the villages are besieged from all sides, and all of the entrances are closed.” He said the lockdown prevents most Palestinians from traveling to work or buying food. The blockade has also had a devastating impact on the physical and mental health of Masafer Yatta’s residents. Citing “fear, terror, stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, very poor economic conditions and restrictions on movement,” Hathaleen observed that “there is no hope at all” in the South Hebron Hills. “We are asking everyone in the world to do their best to stop this,” he implored. “We wish that we will get justice and we will get our dignity back, and we will sleep even one night while feeling safe.” Life in the occupied territories has become exponentially worse as Israeli atrocities are “escalating in their gravity,” Power reported. “War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are now being carried out in the orchestration of this settler colonial project.” She called on the international community to sanction Israel; initiate an arms embargo; prohibit
trade with settlements; and impose asset freezes and travel bans on government, settler and military officials. Additionally, she recommended that states warn dualIsraeli citizens that they could be held liable for war crimes. “We can only resolve this issue by going back to the root causes,” Power asserted. “So it is important for states to recognize that the situation is settler colonialism and apartheid and then introduce measures that bring the settler colonization to an end and address the right to full selfdetermination for the Palestinian people.” —Jack McGrath
Jerusalem’s Tense Calm Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and expert on the geopolitics of contemporary Jerusalem, joined the Balfour Project on Jan. 16 for a webinar on the status of Jerusalem amid the ongoing Gaza war. Seidemann noted that Jerusalem has remained relatively calm since Oct. 7. “Jerusalem is not burning,” he remarked. “I think it surprised everybody—it certainly surprised me.” Despite the lack of rancor on the streets, he said the level of tension in the city remains “very high,” and warned any provocative event could spark unrest. Many residents of Palestinian East Jerusalem are weary amid the current en-
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Israeli forces watch Palestinians pray on a street in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al‐Amud, with al‐Aqsa Mosque in the background, on Jan. 19, 2024. Israel has prohibited Palestinians under the age of 45 from entering the mosque. vironment and are disinclined to raise their voices, preferring instead to find solace in community spaces behind closed doors, Seidemann said. “‘This is not the time for the third intifada’ is the general sentiment,” he said. However, he added, everyone is watching events in Gaza closely and many Palestinian youth in the city “overwhelmingly sympathize with Hamas,” believing the group successfully put the Palestinian struggle back on the world’s radar. Seidemann cautioned that this sympathy “does not equal support. People have not converted their political beliefs in the direction of Hamas, but clearly the sympathy is there. [There is] zero solidarity or identification with Israel.” The current climate differs dramatically from 2021, when Jerusalem was the epicenter of the so-called “unity intifada,” in which Palestinians living in Gaza, Jerusalem, Israel, the West Bank and the diaspora all participated in a massive uprising against Israeli apartheid and dispossession. Rampant settler confiscation of Palestinian homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem and violent Israeli attacks on the al-Aqsa Mosque were among the leading causes of the intifada. Al-Aqsa has remained largely uneventful post-Oct. 7 for several reasons, Seide56
mann said. Most importantly, Palestinians are not interested in turning the area surrounding the mosque into a flashpoint. “This time, the leadership, both political and religious, have told their constituencies to stay away,” he said. Another factor is that access to al-Aqsa remains heavily restricted, as Palestinians below the age of 45 are prohibited by Israel from entering. “Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who normally would have access to Friday prayers at al-Aqsa are not allowed into the city,” he noted. Additionally, the access point for al-Aqsa is now located in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz, preventing protesters from congregating near the heart of Jerusalem. The number of Jewish visitors to the holy site is also down. Seidemann noted that Israeli authorities have been keeping a tight leash on Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, making sure radical elements don’t break the status quo with acts of provocation, as they did in 2021. Seidemann pointed out that the Israeli police patrolling al-Aqsa have shown more restraint than in the past. He believes this is the result of a deal between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his coalition partner, National Security Minister
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Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has authority over the police. Seidemann surmised Netanyahu told Ben-Gvir, “You’re staying away from al-Aqsa—too dangerous— whatever else you want to do in Jerusalem is fine.” Indeed, Seidemann said police elsewhere in Jerusalem have been openly abusive toward Palestinians. “East Jerusalem, de facto, is under something very reminiscent of martial law,” he said. “The Jerusalem police has the trappings of a private militia directed by Ben-Gvir,” an ultranationalist and openly racist provocateur who actively worked to raise tensions in 2021. Seidemann said Palestinians in the city are increasingly subject to summary arrest—day or night. Additionally, police are demanding access to people’s phones to search them for damning information. If refused access, police often smash and destroy phones. Such invasive and abusive acts are illegal, but little is being done to stop these actions. “It is not legal; they need a search warrant, but they don’t get a search warrant,” Seidemann noted. “This is part of the endemic harassment of everyday life, which is worse than it was in the past.” —Dale Sprusansky
Repairing Gaza’s Disintegrated Mental Health System What will it take to restore Gaza’s mental health care system, which was underfunded and understaffed before Oct. 7 and has been virtually destroyed since? “The most urgent call is for an immediate ceasefire,” asserted Samah Jabr, M.D., head of the Mental Health Unit within the Palestinian Ministry of Health and a founding member of the Palestine Global Mental Health Network, at a Dec. 17, 2023, Voices From the Holy Land (VFHL) online film salon. A safe place and the restoration of basic needs such as food and shelter are “prerequisites” before mental health interventions can succeed, according to Jabr, who added that interventions need to be collective—“because this trauma is collective”—and draw on survival strengths ingrained in Palestinian culture, such as MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Injured Palestinians await care at Nasser Hospital, following an Israeli attack on their home in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Jan. 12, 2024. notions of belonging to God, compassion and resilience. Jabr emphasized that “every Palestinian” is in need of mental health support due to the events since Oct. 7. “Children are more vulnerable because of their developmental stage; they have less capacity to talk and express their feelings and they have less understanding of the situation and less developed defense mechanisms,” she explained. Alice Rothchild, M.D., a retired OB/GYN and founder of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Health Advisory Council, said she works to publicize JVP’s “Urgent Health Updates” because it is so difficult for the public to obtain accurate and objectively framed data. She also does this work “because I don’t want people to say ‘we didn’t know.’” Having knowledge motivates people to act, she asserted. Panelist Ahmed Alnaouq has been sharing his personal tragedy in a slew of media appearances to draw the public’s attention to the unfolding genocide. Alnaouq is a journalist living in London who lost 23 members of his immediate family in an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 22, 2023. “Many of my friends were killed as well. I have lost count of how many people I have lost since the beginning of this war.” Alnaouq’s three-year-old nephew Omar MARCH/APRIL 2024
exemplifies the acute trauma experienced by children. Omar was injured in a bombing but survived. He lost his father, grandparents, four uncles, three aunts and 16 cousins. “When he grows up what kind of life will he have?” Alnaouq asked. “How many kids in Gaza have endured the same thing that Omar endured?” Alnaouq has two surviving sisters in Gaza whose families are suffering from lack of food, clean water and safety. “It’s really a traumatic experience to talk to my sisters right now, because everything they talk about is horror, carnage, death, destruction, war, lack of food,” he said. They are “living in limbo” and with the sense that “no one cares about them.” Noting that he receives strength from seeing the international community’s solidarity, Alnaouq called on the salon’s audience to prove to the people of Gaza that the world does care. Jabr concurred with the importance of international solidarity to the mental health of Gazans. “Solidarity humanizes Palestinians when official regimes and mainstream media dehumanize us; it validates our experience,” she said. Jabr added that solidarity actions are also important for the mental health of outside witnesses. Trauma has been defined as “the disaster of helplessness,” she pointed out. “So, to try to do something
about what’s taking place, to stand up and take responsibility, liberates us from the feeling of helplessness, which can be very traumatizing.” Alnaouq emphasized that taking action against the genocide “is not only a responsibility for the Palestinian people, it’s your responsibility. Every single one of you who live in the West, you all have a responsibility toward the Palestinian people, because your governments are using you—using your tax money—in order to fund Israel with weapons, with everything they need.” The event was co-sponsored by the USA Palestine Mental Health Network and Fellowship of Reconciliation. —Catherine Baker
John Mearsheimer: Israel Lobby Now Plays “Smash-Mouth Politics” University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer joined the online magazine Jadaliyya on Jan. 8 for a virtual discussion about the influence of the Israel lobby over U.S. policy in light of the ongoing war in Gaza. Mearsheimer cited the lobby as the primary reason U.S. politicians continue to overwhelmingly support Israel despite growing alarm among Americans regarding its actions. “The key to understanding how the lobby works is that they focus most of their attention on the elites,” he explained. “What they’re really interested in doing is putting tremendous pressure on people who formulate policy, both in the Executive Branch and in Congress,” so that they fear the consequences of betraying the lobby. He cited former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as a prime example of what politicians fear could become of them should they cease toeing the pro-Israel line. While the lobby focuses most of its attention on decision makers, it also attempts to police the public discourse surrounding Israel, Mearsheimer said. College campuses are where much of this energy is focused, as it’s “the place where you really run the risk that things will get out of hand, from the lobby’s point of view, or from Israel’s point of view,” he noted.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy summit in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2023. “That’s why they pay so much attention to what is going on in these places.” One major change that has taken place since he and Stephen Walt published The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in 2007 is that the lobby is now widely known and has been “forced to operate out in the open,” Mearsheimer said. The lobby has responded to this new paradigm by becoming much more publicly abrasive toward its adversaries, playing what he calls “smash-mouth politics.” The latest example of this is the largely successful effort to fire major university presidents over their handling of the Gaza war and allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, he said. Despite operating in plain view, the lobby has largely remained undeterred thanks to the cowardice of leaders, Mearsheimer argued. “The real problem here is not that people don’t know what the lobby is doing and it’s not that lots of people are not deeply disturbed by what the lobby is doing,” he said. “The problem is that most people are afraid to speak up about the lobby, most people are afraid to publicly go toe-to-toe with the lobby, and the end result is that even though the lobby is now playing smash-mouth politics—it’s out in the open—they can get 58
away with it because hardly anybody will stand up and say that this is bad and it needs to be stopped.” In addition to enabling the horrendous suffering of Gazans, which Mearsheimer believes the South African government has convincingly labeled as a genocide, he said the lobby is pushing the U.S. to abandon its national interests. Despite wanting to pivot toward Asia and not become involved in a broader Middle East war, Washington continues to blindly support Israeli polices that move the U.S. away from these goals, he noted. “This is just more evidence of the extent to which Israel is a strategic liability to the United States,” he said. “Israel gets the United States, in this case, into deep trouble in Gaza, and if this war escalates, we’re going to be even more deeply involved in conflict in this region, which is not something that we want.” As for President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Israel, Mearsheimer said he is not surprised, given that the lobby’s power would force “any president of the United States to back Israel to some extent.” However, he believes Biden’s commitment to Israel transcends the dynamics of politics and the lobby. “This is more than that,” he said. “It has a lot to do
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with how Joe Biden thinks about Israel. The fact is Joe Biden has a passionate attachment to Israel that bears no resemblance to the attachment that any other American president has had.” Looking forward, Mearsheimer is largely pessimistic the politics surrounding Israel will change any time soon in the U.S. Meanwhile, he fears Israel will use the events of Oct. 7 to orchestrate another major round of ethnic cleansing, as it did in 1948 and 1967. “There is very good reason to think that the death and destruction is going to increase—maybe even exponentially,” he warned, given recent statements by Israeli leaders. Worse yet, he believes Israel “would not mind at all a general war in the Middle East that involves Lebanon and maybe even Iran. The more widespread the war, the greater the opportunity for ethnic cleansing, and it’s manifestly clear the Israelis are very interested in ethnic cleansing at this point in time.” Should the violence continue to escalate, Mearsheimer does not envision a major policy shift from Washington. “We have a situation where Israel thinks, for good reason, it can do almost anything and it will get support from the United States,” he said. —Dale Sprusansky
Challenging Weapons Transfers to Israel The Forum on the Arms Trade held a virtual panel on Jan. 16 that focused on legal efforts in the Netherlands and the United States to block international weapons transfers to Israel amid its ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Dutch government is sending F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, while the Biden administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress to supply Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and munitions. In November, the Dutch government approved an emergency shipment of U.S.-owned fighter jet parts from a Netherlands warehouse to Israel “despite recognizing the risks of F-35s contributing to war crimes,” said Frank Slijper, Arms Trade project lead at PAX, a Dutch peace MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Pro‐Palestinian activists protest the sale of weapons to Israel outside of the International Armored Vehicles Conference in Twickenham, United Kingdom, on Jan. 22, 2024. organization. “The Dutch government considered the risk of damaging its relations with the U.S. and Israel” to be more serious than “the risk of contributing to violations of international law.” PAX, along with The Rights Forum and the Dutch branch of Oxfam, launched a civil suit against the government to halt the transfers, citing violations of European Union obligations as well as the U.N. Genocide Convention and Geneva Conventions. Although the court acknowledged that the lawsuit had legal standing and F35s had likely contributed to war crimes, it ruled against the case. “The considerations that the [government] minister makes are to a large extent of a political and policy nature, and judges should leave the minister a large amount of freedom,” the court concluded. Slijper elaborated on the court’s decision, which claimed the government “was right to take into account [nonhumanitarian] concerns, such as damage to its diplomatic relations with Israel and the U.S., as well as the financial-economic consequences of stopping part of the transfers.” He observed, “The Dutch government is obsessed with not damaging its reputation vis-à-vis the U.S. and Israel, [but] it apparently does not care how its reputation in the rest of the world has been damaged.” The plaintiffs asked the Netherlands’ Court of Appeal to overturn the ruling in MARCH/APRIL 2024
a January hearing. Slijper remains hopeful about the proceedings, reasoning, “The whole world sees what’s happening to the people in Gaza, how especially fighter aircraft have bombed so heavily. How on earth can you then continue exporting weapons that so clearly play a role in the conflict?” The same question has been posed to the Biden administration, which abandoned any pretense of human rights compliance in favor of supplying unconditional military aid to Israel. John Ramming Chappell, advocacy and legal fellow at the U.S.-based Center for Civilians in Conflict, outlined some of the laws and policies ostensibly intended to regulate arms transfers. “The Leahy laws,” he noted, “prohibit the provision of security assistance to any unit of foreign security forces where the U.S. government has credible information that they have engaged in a gross violation of human rights,” while the Foreign Assistance Act “prohibits security assistance to any country that has restricted delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid.” Chappell noted that the Biden administration’s own 2023 Conventional Arms Transfer Policy says that the U.S. government “will not transfer weapons when it is more likely than not those weapons will be used to commit, facilitate or aggravate the commission of serious
violations of international human rights law [or] humanitarian law.” However, this policy “has a line that says, ‘this is not legally enforceable,’ essentially this is not law,” he pointed out. Arms control legislation is also problematic, as it is often “constructed in ways that make enforcement difficult and [make it] open to interpretations by U.S. government lawyers,” Chappell explained. Laws typically include clauses such as “when the secretary of state has credible information” or “when the U.S. government determines,” he added. “So, you have standards that are put into law, but you have deference to the executive branch about how those standards are actually implemented.” Ultimately, courts have determined that “they shouldn’t weigh in” on these matters, Chappell said. “There are strong arguments against [this view], but this has been a barrier to enforcing the standards I’ve discussed.” —Jack McGrath
Dr. Refaat Alareer’s Memory: Let It Be a Tale... The Jerusalem Fund in Washington, DC hosted an evening of solidarity with Gaza on Dec. 21, 2023, dedicated to honoring the life, memory and legacy of Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was killed in a targeted assassination by the Israeli military on Dec. 6, along with his brother, nephew, sister and three of her children. In his opening remarks, the Jerusalem Fund’s executive director Jehad Abusalim said he hoped the event would be more than a vigil or a memorial, but an inspiration. “We should be inspired by the tales of heroism, defiance and resilience coming from Gaza as we reflect on Dr. Alareer’s loss and legacy,” he said, noting that Alareer was his first English writing teacher. Abusalim said Alareer made him open his eyes to details. In 2022, Abusalim co-edited Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, an anthology which includes Alareer’s reflections on his life and work. Helena Cobban, founder and CEO of Just World Books, which published Alareer’s powerful anthology, Gaza Writes
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Back: Short Stories by Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014), as well as Gaza Unsilenced (2015), which he co-edited, said that she was “beyond words” to describe what our tax dollars have helped Israel do to Gaza. But Cobban affirmed, Alareer would have been the first to say, “we need to generate words.” Alareer was above all a teacher of English poetry. John Donne was his favorite poet, but he also loved to teach Shakespeare as well as Palestinian literature. He was dedicated to helping his Gazan students and himself process their unique experiences, sometimes in fiction, other times in poetry. The first time Alareer met a Jewish person who wasn’t blocking his movements was during his U.S. speakers’ tour for Gaza Writes Back, in 2014. His now famous “If I Must Die” kite poem from that book has been translated into 200 languages and prompted mourners to fly kites in his memory. (Visitors to Middle East Books and More are purchasing all of his books and book clubs are studying his work.) Pam Bailey, co-founder of the We Are Not Numbers (WANN) platform, which pairs young writers in the Gaza Strip with experienced mentors around the world, described her first meeting with Alareer. She was looking for aspiring writers and everyone recommended speaking to this exceptional English professor who was adored by his students and lifted up their work. Alareer urged them to “show, don’t tell” and to write about their daily lives, not only about the violence they endured. (The Washington Report has published numerous WANN articles.) In a livestream interview on Electronic Intifada on the third day of Israel’s bombardment, Alareer said, “I’m an academic. The toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker. But if the Israelis invade...I’m going to use that marker to throw it at the Israeli soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I would be able to do.” Bailey also recalled a video he took in his final days walking through his demolished home, mourning his books. After he moved his family to an UNRWA school for safety, he received a phone call warning 60
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(L‐r) Pam Bailey, Laila El‐Haddad, Helena Cobban, Mahmoud Al‐Yazji and Jehad Abusalim honor Dr. Refaat Alareer at the Jerusalem Fund in Washington, DC, on Dec. 6, 2023. him that authorities knew where he was. Worried that Israel would bomb the school, he moved in with his sister’s family, where a rocket flew straight into their apartment. He didn’t get a chance to throw his Expo marker. Alareer was not collateral damage, but was directly targeted. Israel wants to destroy the intellectuals, the people who will rebuild, and those who speak the truth, Bailey concluded. Laila El-Haddad, author of Gaza Mom and The Gaza Kitchen, also co-edited Gaza Unsilenced with Alareer. She talked to his students who said they wanted to be heard, to know how to tell their stories to the West so that people would listen. During their last conversations, El-Haddad said Alareer was worried about the animals he was trying to feed who were dying in the Gaza zoo. His student Mahmoud Al-Yazji said Alareer was funny. He joked that his teacher’s hobby was looking at sentence structure and dictionaries. “He made you feel like you were his only student.” He declared, “I am going to fight with my pencil and never give up until Palestine is free.” The speakers concluded by saying we owe it to Alareer and all the others we’ve lost to rebuild Gaza from scratch, end the blockade for good and continue to fight for justice in Palestine. —Delinda C. Hanley
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Activists Protest Jewish National Fund Conference in Denver
In early December 2023, a coalition of activists led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)-Denver/Boulder and the Colorado Palestine Coalition gathered outside the Colorado Convention Center to protest each day of the Jewish National FundUSA’s (JNF-USA) four-day annual conference. The non-profit organization supports Israel’s occupation by financing illegal settlement building on Palestinian land. On the final day of the event, Dec. 3, protesters closed a major intersection in downtown Denver as JNF members were leaving the convention center. Chained to each other, 15 activists— mostly members of JVP—occupied the intersection of Speer Boulevard and Champa Street for more than an hour, while police and fire personnel worked to separate and arrest the activists. They were surrounded by over a hundred allies from diverse organizations. “A growing number of Jews are taking responsibility to use our voices,” said Siena Mann, a member of the JVPDenver/Boulder chapter. “We wanted to let the Jewish National Fund know they were not welcome in Denver.” JNF-USA is the fundraising arm of Israel’s Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKLMARCH/APRIL 2024
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Marin County Activists Call for Ceasefire
Protesters hold a demonstration outside of the Jewish National Fund’s annual conference in Denver, CO, on Dec. 3, 2023.
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influence President Joe Biden’s actions as we lead up to the 2024 election.” At a Dec. 21, 2023, press conference held on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol, State Rep. Iman Jodeh (D), the first Palestinian American and Muslim elected to state or federal office in Colorado, was joined by community leaders, lawmakers and members of diverse faith communities to call for a ceasefire. Following the press conference, Jodeh said, “I wanted our congressional delegation to know that there is a very diverse group of Coloradans, there are constituents, who believe that there should be a ceasefire.” —Jeff Wright
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JNF), established in 1901. Known in the U.S. as the Jewish National Fund, the organization is omnipresent in Hebrew schools and synagogues through its iconic blue donation boxes. According to their website, “When you donate to Jewish National Fund-USA, you are building a bright, beautiful future for the people and land of Israel.” Protesters charge that JNF-USA’s mission, “for the people and land of Israel,” is focused solely on Israel’s Jewish citizens and serves to dispossess Palestinians. The organization owns 13 percent of the total land in Israel. Long-time Jewish activist Rob Prince, a retired senior lecturer at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies, said he was heartened by the turnout at the protest. “What strikes me about [these young Jewish advocates], they are specifically looking at the occupation of Palestine from a Jewish point of view and, unlike many of their parents and grandparents, well, they ‘get it,’” he commented. “What moves them is our common humanity. They understand the racist nature of Zionism. They’re concerned about what Zionism has done to Judaism.” JVP’s Mann added, “We’re turning our collective energy now to political targets— our senators and congresspeople—to move them to call for a ceasefire. Young progressives, as well as Arab and Jewish voting blocs across the country, hope to
Marin County residents gathered on Jan. 27 in downtown San Rafael, CA to demand that their congressional representative, Jared Huffman (D-CA), support H.R. 786, which calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The turnout of several hundred protesters was one of the largest the small county has seen in some time. The rally and march were organized by Marin for Palestine and the Democratic Socialists of America (Marin DSA). Addressing the crowd, Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said, “I am here because of reality. Mass murder is going on in Gaza every single day—and it must stop.” He went on to reflect, “Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and we say ‘never again’ for anyone. Not for Jews, not for Palestinians, not for anyone. Not in our name, not with our tax dollars, not with our silence. We will not tolerate the extermination of the Palestinian people.” At the conclusion of the rally, activists marched to Rep. Huffman’s office, where they placed bloody children’s shoes and flowers, along with two small-wrapped effigies of dead children, representing those killed during Israel’s war. —Phil Pasquini
Activists stage a protest outside of Rep. Jared Huffman’s office in San Rafael, CA, on Jan. 27, 2024. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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Middle East Books Review All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1101
Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind By Haidar Eid, LeftWord Books, 2023, paperback, 105 pp. MEB $15
Reviewed by Ida Audeh The Palestinian revolutionary Basil Al-Araj, who was assassinated by Israel in 2017, exhorted his countrymen to “liberate your mind before the land,” and this book attempts to do just that by critiquing the 1993 Oslo Accords and pointing to a better way forward. Decolonizing the Palestinian Mind focuses on the Palestinian acquiescence to the structures created by that agreement, which perpetuate Israel’s colonial regime. It argues that Palestinian political organizations on the left and right, whether secular or religious, whether headquartered in Ramallah or in Gaza, accepted the Oslo paradigm and jockeyed for positions in its structures—such as the Palestinian Legislative Council and other ministries—long after it was clear that the terms of the accords were crafted by Israel to make its occupation permanent. Oslo, which intellectual Edward Said referred to as the “Palestinian Versailles,” did not recognize the political or national rights of the Palestinian people. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) nonetheless accepted Israel as a Jewish state, cementing Palestinians’ dispossession and inferior status. Getting Palestinians to accept this, to create undemocratic structures that serve colonial interests, required ignoring or subordinating the revolutionary consciousness of the population, which Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report. 62
evolved over years of experience and struggle. (It is a curious thing that Palestinians under occupation volunteer extensive criticism of the Oslo agreement as a national disaster but never hold the late Yasser Arafat responsible for it, even though he was the only PLO leader who had the stature to sign such a flawed agreement and to sell it to the public as a victory.) What is needed, author Haidar Eid argues, is a vision that breaks out of the Oslo framework in every way: a single democratic secular state in all of Palestine with equal rights for all. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) approach opens opportunities for moving away from the Oslo framework. He urges the study of the Latin American and South African struggles and advocates for a reconstituted Palestine National Congress that encourages the participation of all Palestinians, particularly in the diaspora, and an alternative to the neoliberal economic system. Eid maintains: “Only the restoration of Palestine’s multicultural identity, one that is inclusive, secular and democratic, can lead to lasting peace between the Jordan River and the MediterWASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
ranean Sea and beyond.” Eid could not have foretold that by the time his book was published, the conditions it described would be upended. On Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza fighters broke out of the Gaza prison, ending the 17-year status quo in the besieged territory. (The West Bank had been waging armed conflict even before then.) Today the resistance in Gaza and the West Bank calls for an end to Israeli colonialism and affirms that it is fighting for liberation until victory or martyrdom. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has demonstrated to the world what Palestinians have always known: Zionism is an existential threat to Palestinians and to the people of the region. Eid is an associate professor of postcolonial studies and postmodern literature at al-Aqsa University in Gaza; he received his doctorate degree from the University of Johannesburg and is a naturalized South African citizen. He draws liberally on the anti-apartheid struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) to identify shortcomings in the official Palestinian position. His discussion of the strengths of that movement, its achievements and the role of the boycott movement in delegitimizing the apartheid South Africa regime are especially relevant at this moment in Palestine’s history. How fitting that South Africa, whose first president, Nelson Mandela, linked Palestine’s freedom with South Africa’s, should be the country to charge Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice. Two prologues, clearly added to the manuscript after it had been sent to the printer, tell of the author’s family, like hundreds of thousands of others in Gaza, on the move, searching for the illusory safe haven. The price paid by Gazans for defying Israeli colonialist plans has been livestreamed to the world, and it is gutwrenching to witness. Throughout historic Palestine, battles are raging between a powerful Israeli military asserting its colonial rights and groups of determined militias fighting for their nation’s freedom and dignity. These battles will determine the future of Palestine, which makes Eid’s argument for envisioning the kind of liberation we want all the more urgent. MARCH/APRIL 2024
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The Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel By Abba A. Solomon, Lulu, 2023, paperback, 168 pp. MEB $15
Reviewed by Steve France It came as no surprise to author Abba A. Solomon that Israeli leaders quickly saw the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 as giving them license to “get the job done.” The job, of course, is to massively accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and break their will to resist. In a post-Oct. 7 article in Common Dreams, Solomon wrote, “The strangulation of…Gaza is the ultimate expression of the militant Jewish nationalist assertion of control.” As for the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, he likened them to slave revolts or colonial uprisings, both in their horrific violence and in how the violence was hyped to demonize the oppressed and justify merciless revenge. Solomon is also not surprised that most American Jewish organizations have so far kept their see-no-evil stance toward Israel, even as a full-scale genocide is under way in plain view. His new book, The Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel, published earlier in 2023, puts a focus on the shameful record of the American Jewish establishment’s support for the slower paced, but relentless elimination of the Palestinians. In 36 pithy chapters (the book is only 168 pages), Solomon shares his research showing the Zionist hijacking of Jewish identity, how it diddles American Jews and dragoons them into helping to sway U.S. politicians to support policies antithetical to humane American—and Jewish—values. Together, the chapters argue that lust for power was and is the mainspring of Zionism, although its leaders have preferred to promote their violent nationalism as the only solution to Jewish vulnerability to pogroms and other persecutions in non-Jewish lands. It’s dismaying to read how Zionists overcame all obstacles to establish the state of Israel in 1948, including vociferous Steve France is an activist and writer affiliated with Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Palestine-Israel Network. MARCH/APRIL 2024
Jewish opposition that was stronger than it is today and lasted through the Holocaust. Early Zionist arguments—steeped in anti-Arab prejudice—were just as flimsy as those rolled out today, and they were swallowed almost as meekly by many Americans. The sharpest disputes were with other Jews, including—surprisingly—members of the then non-Zionist American Jewish Committee (AJC). The AJC has long since become a ferocious defender of the Israeli state, but it was considered a safe place for anti-Zionist reasoning until Israel violently established itself in 1948. An AJC member, Maurice Hexter, warned in 1946 against succumbing to “the miasma of Jewish unity” imposed on Jews to keep silent about the grisly fate Zionists intended for the indigenous people of Palestine. He urged the AJC to publicly oppose Zionist demands for complete control of Palestine. Instead, the organization soon caved under Israel’s pressure. As for arguments that bamboozled the Joe Bidens of yesteryear, Solomon offers some splendid examples. In March 1948, the soon-to-be Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Shertok (later Sharett), assured the U.N. Security Council that the Jewish diaspora would provide many “Jewish hostages throughout the world” to guarantee the good behavior of Jews in Palestine toward the Arabs. When Israeli good behavior failed to materialize, the AJC and other U.S. Jewish organizations simply abandoned their pleas for restraint, gave up and fell in line. Indeed, they retooled to become deniers and deflectors of any reports of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, Solomon WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
says, as well as advocates for conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of the Israeli state’s actions. For example, Jacob Blaustein, who served as AJC chairman from 1949 to 1954, insisted to U.S. policymakers that “the more the Arabs are kowtowed to, the more intransigent they get and the further removed is peace.” The flip side, he added, was that kowtowing to Israeli leaders would have the opposite effect. Therefore, he argued, freely providing tons of U.S. military aid and diplomatic support to the Israeli state would strengthen Israeli moderates and weaken hardliners. Solomon considers Zionism to be an insidious form of anti-Semitism, as it reduces “Jewish values” to propagating unwavering support for a national project. He quotes Israeli sociologist Ran Greenstein, who notes, “What remains of ‘Jewish values’ in the Israeli context is one thing only: survival as a ‘people that dwells alone’ [a trope from the Hebrew Bible] at any cost, regardless and at the expense of anything and anyone that stands in the way of this hellish vision.” No wonder he teaches at a South African university. It’s amazing—and frightening—to find from Solomon’s research that the AJC said as much back in January 1948, castigating a Zionist state as a “monstrous idol,” a state set to act as a “complete master not only over its own immediate subjects but also over every living Jewish body and soul the world over, beyond any consideration of good or evil.” This lively book shows that the mass killing of Palestinians demands the elimination of Jewish conscience. Today, the consciences of most major Jewish organizations seem to scarcely have a pulse. Who will administer the desperately needed moral CPR?
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution By Vincent Bevins, PublicAffairs, 2023, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $17.99
Reviewed by Suhaib Khan The decade between 2010 and 2020 saw the largest displays of mass demonstra63
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tions in human history. Across the world, places including Egypt, Brazil, Hong Kong, Tunisia, Libya, Ukraine, Chile and Syria experienced uprisings unprecedented in scale that led to a reordering of the status quo— but for the worse, in every country except for Chile and Tunisia. If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins is a crucial retrospective on this tumultuous decade, based on interviews with individuals involved with the uprisings, the politicians tasked with responding to them, and on the author’s own observations as a foreign correspondent living in Sao Paolo during its uprising. The uprisings each followed the same pattern: a local protest facing police aggression, images of police brutality spreading across social media platforms, large numbers of people turning out for demonstrations, forcing politicians to the negotiating table. In most cases, the politicians found that the masses on the streets did not have representatives or, in many cases, concrete objectives. In January 2011, a small group of young socialists in Egypt organized a protest against police brutality after seeing a video on social media of an ordinary man, Khaled Said, dragged from an internet cafe in Alexandria and beaten to death by the police. Their protest was met with water cannons, and just three days later Cairo ground to at a halt as millions—the poor, the middle class, the religious, the irreligious—heeded the call to occupy Tahrir Square. It was on this historic Friday that people began to make the famous chant, “The people want the fall of the regime,” which was not even a demand the socialists who had planned the demonstration intended to make. The armed forces sided with the emerging demand that President Hosni Mubarak had to go—and so he did. Two years later, the armed forces deposed the first democratically elected leader in Egypt’s history, resulting in the current period of repression that has no parallel in modern Egyptian history. In Sao Paolo, a tiny group of ragtag punk anarchists organized protests in 2013 Suhaib Khan is an attorney living in New York City. 64
against transit fare hikes. The protests ballooned, following the same pattern as Egypt, resulting in mass leaderless demonstrations in Sao Paolo across ideological and class lines. The ensuing chaos forced President Dilma Rousseff to the negotiating table to address the protestors’ demands, which were largely about the standard of living endured by Brazil’s poor. When the vast, leaderless and anti-partisan movement was unable to maintain a coherent set of demands, a right-wing free market group stepped in to channel the energy into anti-Rousseff sentiment. As the tumult progressed, Rousseff’s approval rating fell from over 60 percent to 12 percent, right-wing forces in Congress successfully impeached and removed her from office, and in 2019 Jair Bolsonaro was elected president. Only in two places did the uprisings of the last decade result in genuine systemic changes, and it is not difficult to see why. In Tunisia, the protests sparked by the self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi were met with general strikes in solidarity from Tunisia’s robust and autonomous set of labor unions. When President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was deposed, Tunisia’s preexisting parties—Islamists, leftists and liberals—came together to agree on a democratic constitution. The role of existing, disciplined and membership-based organizations was critical to securing Tunisia’s democratic reforms (which have largely lapsed in recent years). Similarly, when Chile experienced its own mass uprising triggered by rising transit fares, the country’s large number WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
of mass organizations (such as student unions and feminist groups) were well-positioned to take advantage of the opening created by the protests. The student demonstrators succeeded because they worked within existing institutions to define strategy and goals—and when the opportunity arose, they rode those institutions into the halls of power. Just over ten years ago, current Chilean President Gabriel Boric was a student protesting the fare hike. Bevins’ most important observation is that there is no such thing as a political vacuum, and it can always get worse. In Egypt, an authoritarian regime was replaced by one that is much more ruthless. In Libya, an authoritarian leader was replaced by a failed state. In Syria, an authoritarian leader clung to his throne as the country was ripped apart to the point that we can no longer talk about Syria as a single country. In Hong Kong, limited autonomy was replaced with the absolute rule of Beijing. The protests of the past decade created real openings for systemic change, and in nearly all the countries where such spectacles occurred, they were seized and manipulated by conservative forces. When subsequent spectacles emerge, whether things will get better or worse will depend on whether those seeking change are prepared to meet the moment.
Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization By Leon McCarron, Pegasus Books, 2023, hardcover, 352 pp. MEB $28.95
Report by Delinda C. Hanley The Embassy of Iraq to the United States hosted a book talk and panel discussion on Nov. 8, 2023, featuring award-winning writer, broadcaster and world explorer Leon McCarron. He shared stories from his spectacular “source-to-sea” journey along the Tigris River, which he has captured in an exquisite book, Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization. McCarron grew up on a small farm in Northern Ireland, a “complicated place,” MARCH/APRIL 2024
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and yearned to travel. In his 20s he started exploring the world on foot and by bike. In the past decade he has travelled more than 50,000 km (31,000 miles) by “human power.” After his first trip to Iraq in 2016, he and his partner, photographer Emily Garthwaite, moved to Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq in 2019. McCarron said he loves the south of Iraq, the cradle of civilization, including its ancient marshlands, as well as the north, with its mountainous landscape. He, Garthwaite, Swiss filmmaker Claudio von Planta and their small team of Iraqi environmentalists travelled around 820 miles by boat along the length of the Tigris River, despite “the frequency of warnings about being shot at.” They started at its source, the Birkleyn Gorge or “Tigris Tunnel” in the Taurus Mountains, where Assyrian kings left rock inscriptions. It took the adventurers 71 days to “follow it, through canyon, lake and floodplain, until we too spilled out to the sea [the Persian Gulf].” At the end of their journey, the travelers all jumped into the water to celebrate. They passed around a bottle of water filled from the Tigris Tunnel, and each took a swig, pouring the rest ceremoniously back into the river. “Let’s hope,” said fellow-traveler Salman Khairalla, an Iraqi environmental activist who trains and empowers local communities to save their waterways, “that these drops are not the last ever freshwater to travel down the Tigris.” The Tigris River has been the lifeblood of both ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq, but geopolitics and climate change have left MARCH/APRIL 2024
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi, Picador, 2021, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $19.99. The best-selling book of 2023 at Middle East Books and More! Rashid Khalidi, the foremost U.S. historian of the Middle East, offers the first general account of the “conflict” told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of his family members— mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats and journalists—this book upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend—at best—to describe a tragic “clash” between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces 100 years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile “peace process.” The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating view of a conflict that continues to rage. Behind You Is the Sea: A Novel by Susan Muaddi Darraj, HarperVia, 2024, hardcover, 256 pp. MEB $26. Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three families—the Baladis, the Salamehs and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in the U.S. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode. The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister after accusations of “dishonoring” the family. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations. Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on, and masterfully weaves a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts and devastating secrets. The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance by Shaul Magid, Ayin Press, 2023, paperback, 318 pp. MEB $22.95. What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations’ answers to these questions, and the future of Jewish life will depend on how we respond to them in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition. On many levels, Zionism was conceived as an attempt to “end the exile” of the Jewish people, both politically and theologically. In a series of incisive essays, Magid challenges us to consider the price of diminishing or even erasing the exilic character of Jewish life. A thought-provoking work of political imagination, The Necessity of Exile reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel-Palestine, anti-Semitism, diaspora and a broken world in need of repair. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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the birthplace of civilization at risk of becoming uninhabitable, McCarron warned listeners. No one has ever written a historical book about the river and the people living along it, who McCarron called “the modernday guardians of our heritage.” Wounded Tigris opens our eyes to what humanity stands to lose with the death of a great river, and what can be done to try to save it. McCarron warned his audience, “The Tigris is in trouble.” It is heavily polluted, and its misuse is contributing to desertification. As arable land along this historic river disappears, farmers are on the move to cities, or emigrating. Iraq’s marshlands, which lie between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, are believed by many to be the Bible’s Garden of Eden. The wetlands once spread for 3,500 square miles, but Saddam Hussein drained most
of the water in the 1990s to choke out rebel insurgents. In 2003 his dams were torn down, half the marsh returned and began to slowly recover, becoming an UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2016. The efforts to resurrect the marshlands show there is hope for Iraq’s water future. McCarron also documents the contemporary life of Iraq’s people and their hope for the future and pride in their past. During the journey, McCarron told the audience gathered at the embassy that they got to know a lot of farmers, fisherfolk, activists, archaeologists, as well as the Iraqi soldiers sometimes escorting them. Some of the soldiers enjoyed the brotherhood and lifestyle of the military, and others said they would have preferred to be artists, musicians or engineers. One was a member of the “Crocodile Club” in Baghdad, “an exclu-
sive group for men with exciting facial hair,” McCarron noted. “They meet regularly to do community service and compare moustaches.” (The photos in Wounded Tigris are stunning and sometimes amusing.) In his author’s note, McCarron admits, “This was a hard journey and took a significant mental and physical toll on all of us who made it. There were a lot of reasons for this: the military attention, the instability of many of the areas we went through, the heat, the gastroenteritis. It became overwhelming to see the layers of trauma and tragedy that Iraqis have suffered.” Despite this, McCarron’s devotion to Iraq’s history, culture and faith come through on every page of his engaging book as he shows, “Iraq is not just war and conflict.” The next speaker at the Iraqi Embassy was Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the
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Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who summarized disturbing findings from her organization’s project, “Water and the Future of the Middle East.” Pointing to idyllic photos of the Iraqi marshland, Hall emphasized there is now water insecurity in the Middle East as the population increases and water resources decrease. Water pollution and scarcity are causing increased violence between communities and states. Despite a 1987 agreement, Turkey regularly withholds water from downriver nations like Syria and Iraq, which are themselves embroiled by conflict. Weaponizing water is common, as upstream neighbors take advantage of downstream countries weakened by violence, Hall said. The Fertile Crescent is no longer fertile, Hall warned, adding that international laws must be enforced when it comes to transboundary water. Jordan is another water scarce country, Hall noted, and serves as a warning to Iraq. The Jordan River, prized by the entire world, is just a trickle today. “We didn’t save it,” she said. It might be too late to save the Tigris if people give in to hopelessness, and say, “My neighbor is using a lot of water so I will too.” That attitude just leads straight off the cliff. McCarron said he favors an additional solution: “Bring the young environmentalists across Iraq into the conversation and give them the financial and political support they need for their projects. McCarron said he is inspired by Basra’s story. The southern Iraqi city was on the verge of becoming uninhabitable in 2003 after decades of water overuse, pollution and reduced rainfall. When he traveled there in 2021, thanks to the rehabilitation of major water treatment plants, he saw a transformation. McCarron, who is currently designing the first long-distance walking trail in Iraq, is planning more book talks this spring. Environmentalists, people who love the Middle East, as well as armchair travelers, will not be able to put down his engaging and important book. Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report. MARCH/APRIL 2024
N E W A R R I VA L S The Oud: An Illustrated History by Rachel Beckles Willson, Interlink, 2023, hardcover, 256 pp. MEB $40. According to a literary tradition of Iraq, the origin of the oud lies in the grief of Lamak, a descendent of Cain, son of Adam. When his five-year-old son died, Lamak hung the boy’s limp body on a tree, and as time passed, he resolved to build a musical instrument from the remaining bones. He then played it, wept and sang the first lament; his daughter Sila became an instrument maker. Thus, the oud is a beautiful pear-shaped box, with neck and strings, that makes music, but it can also be a link to the world of storytelling that brings new voices to life. The oud is one of the most important instruments in music cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, and while associated mainly with the Arab world, it is also played in Iran, Türkiye and Greece. More recently it has spread into East Africa, Europe, Australia, the Americas, China and Japan. This book explores the oud’s history and explores its varied construction over time and place, revealing its widespread repertoire and immensely diverse players. Novel Palestine: Nation Through the Works of Ibrahim Nasrallah by Nora E.H. Parr, University of California Press, 2023, paperback, 232 pp. MEB $40. Palestinian writing imagines the nation, not as a nation-in-waiting, but as a living, changing structure that joins people, place and time into a distinct set of formations. Novel Palestine examines these imaginative structures so that we might move beyond the idea of an incomplete or fragmented reality and speak frankly about the nation that exists and the freedom it seeks. Engaging the writings of Ibrahim Nasrallah, Nora E.H. Parr traces a vocabulary through which Palestine can be discussed as a changing and flexible national network linking people across and within space, time and community. Through an exploration of the Palestinian literary scene subsequent to its canonical writers, Parr makes the life and work of Nasrallah available to an English-language audience for the first time, offering an intervention in geography while bringing literary theory into conversation with politics and history. Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge by Maged Mandour, I.B. Tauris, 2024, hardcover, 224 pp. MEB $27. Since the coup of 2013 ended Egypt’s brief democratic experiment and Abdel Fattah El-Sisi became president, his regime has unleashed mass repression and severe restrictions on an unprecedented scale. This has been characterized by arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances and the torture of real—or suspected—political activists and dissidents. The Sisi regime has not only entangled the country in political violence, but has also mired Egypt in a deep economic crisis. Written by Egyptian political analyst Maged Mandour, Egypt Under El-Sisi includes analysis of primary sources, such as laws and constitutional amendments issued by the regime, statements made by regime officials and local media, as well as official economic data from state sources and international organizations. Mandour explains exactly how Sisi operates and what makes his regime so different—and so dangerous—compared to those that came before. WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
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CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST
Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore
Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon
CWWW.OTHERWORDS.ORG
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
CWS/CARTOONARTS INTERNATIONAL www.cartoonweb.com
Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia
Correio Do Povo, Porto Alegre, Brazil
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www.Otherwords.org
MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Other People’s Mail Compiled by Dale Sprusansky
CEASE BLIND SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL To The Columbian, Jan. 18, 2024 “There is no man so blind as he who will not see.” For 75 years we in the West have fed the rise of a nation state which today abrogates to itself the right to destroy a people, and to do it in such a bald-faced way that otherwise intelligent and logical people choose to not see it, but rather blame its victims for their own destruction. Together, the U.S., Europe and Israel justify the crime of genocide, which has been otherwise rightly condemned in Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere. The people of Palestine have been denied their homes, their livelihoods, their history, and now their very lives, in favor of the creation of a “Western democracy” in the Middle East. Meanwhile, a majority of our fellow citizens choose not to see or understand these crimes. Despite that, every Palestinian child crushed to a nameless jelly in a bombed building, or burned up like a piece of rubbish by exploding shells, is being murdered in our name. William Sterr, Vancouver, WA
BIDEN NEEDS TO GET TOUGH WITH ISRAEL To the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Jan. 29, 2024 The atrocities in Gaza being perpetrated by Israel have resulted in the death of over 27,000 people and must stop. The solution is to impose a ceasefire and a two-state solution. Anything less will only result in furMARCH/APRIL 2024
TELL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS WHAT YOU THINK PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW WASHINGTON, DC 20500 COMMENT LINE: (202) 456-1111 WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 2201 C ST. NW WASHINGTON, DC 20520 PHONE: (202) 647-6575 VISIT WWW.STATE.GOV TO E-MAIL
ANY MEMBER: U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES WASHINGTON, DC 20515 (202) 225-3121
ther violence and death. How can this be achieved? It is only possible if the U.S. cuts off all military and other financial aid to Israel. There is precedent for such action. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush delayed providing Israel with loan guarantees of $10 billion until it halted its settlement building in Gaza and the West Bank. As a consequence, Israel halted some of its settlement building. However, once Bush reinstated the loan guarantees several months later, Israel continued with unfettered settlement construction. The question is, does President Joe Biden have the backbone and the moral compass to do so? Bush was attacked by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and by other pro-Israel groups and lost some votes. But isn’t it more important to do the right thing and support the people of Gaza, and bring an end to the needless killings of innocents and finally achieve peace between Israel and Palestine? Harry Wruck, Waikiki, HI
TIME TO SAY “NO” TO ISRAEL To the Longview News-Journal, Jan. 24, 2024 Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says “no” to a Palestinian state and a two-state solution—not now, not ever. He also told the U.S. he will do what he wants regardless of what Washington, DC suggests or wants. He further said that friends need to be able to tell friends “no.” I will agree with one thing the Israeli premier said—that friends should be able to tell friends “no.” However, it seems no one in DC is able to do just that.
ANY SENATOR: U.S. SENATE WASHINGTON, DC 20510 (202) 224-3121
They are not able to say “no” to more money to Israel in support of its genocidal campaign in Gaza. They are unable to say “no” to sending more weapons and bombs to Israel, which enable it to bomb schools, hospitals, churches and mosques, and destroy any vestige of Palestinian society. They have shown a craven lack of backbone to apply any red lines on Israel. Maybe leaders fear AIPAC will come after them and they may lose their precious Washington, DC gigs. Or, maybe they just don’t care how many women and children Israel kills. Jerry King, Kilgore, TX
SENATORS LOOK AWAY AMID ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE To the Orlando Sentinel, Jan. 24, 2024 The hypocrisy of Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rick Scott (R-FL) on U.S.Israel policy seems unshaken by the Gaza genocide, as revealed in their silence and votes in Congress. As the world watches in horror, our senators are mute on the slaughter of tens of thousands— many of them children—and have opposed every call for a ceasefire. While Gazans starve and Israel bombs hospitals, kills journalists and makes the Palestinian enclave uninhabitable, Rubio and Scott just voted against a resolution in Congress to require the State Department to certify that U.S. weapons given to Israel are not used to violate human rights. [Now that] the International Court of Justice rule[d] that Israel is guilty of war crimes, as meticulously detailed by South Africa, they may surely celebrate as the U.S. casts its veto to protect Israel from accountability. But don’t be surprised to see
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Rubio and Scott grandstanding the very next day about “human rights” and “respect for international law” when it concerns America’s global rivals like Russia and China. Do Rubio and Scott know that 40 percent of Gaza’s population is under the age of 14, and 50 percent under the age of 18? Would they stand idly by if their grandchildren were being killed, losing limbs, and being operated on without anesthesia because Israel is preventing the delivery of medical supplies? One day the genocide will be over, but the moral stain on Rubio and Scott will be remembered forever. Bob Horner, Orlando, FL
GENOCIDE CHARGE IS OBVIOUS To the Portland Press Herald, Jan. 21, 2024 On Jan. 11, South Africa presented its 84-page charge of genocide—perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians of Gaza—to the United Nations’ International Court of Justice. I don’t need that much paper: 27,000 Palestinians have been murdered; 10,000 of these have been children. Scott Hammond, Portland, ME
NEW OPINION ABOUT ISRAEL To The Dallas Morning News, Jan. 24, 2024 Re: “Stop blind support of Israel,” by Philip Mein, Jan. 17 letters. Thanks to Mein for his excellent letter. He writes, “For more than 60 years, Israel has subjugated the Palestinian people of the West Bank and Gaza, and year by year taken over their land for Jewish settlements.” And, “During this time, the U.S. has provided uncritical support and armament to the Israeli government and vetoed dozens of United Nations resolutions critical of Israel’s actions.” Spot on! Like most people my age (80s), I strongly supported the Israeli people and their government for decades. My opinion began to change in the ’90s as I learned how harshly the Palestinians were being treated during various intifadas. With the takeovers of Palestinian land for settle70
ments, Israel’s behavior began to look suspiciously like a land grab. Finally came the dominance of an ultraconservative government in Israel, led by Binyamin Netanyahu. With the settlements and Netanyahu firmly in place, any chance of a reasonable partition has become impossible. Today, I totally oppose the Israeli government for its abuse of Palestinians. Apartheid is not too strong a word! Bill Maxwell, Dallas/Casa Linda, TX
NEGOTIATE A CEASEFIRE INSTEAD OF ATTACKING HOUTHIS To the Daily Camera, Jan. 24, 2024 How on earth does Biden get away with attacking Yemen almost daily without a declaration of war from Congress? He talks all the time about democracy, but he is acting like a dictator! Congress is the sole entity with the power to declare war. Furthermore, the best way to end the Houthi attacks on shipping through the Red Sea is for Israel to immediately stop all of its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. The United States should halt all military aid to Israel and should join all the other nations at the U.N. who are demanding an immediate ceasefire.
IndextoAdvertisers American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA). . . . . . . Inside Front Cover Capitol Hill Citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 KinderUSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Middle East Children’s Alliance . . . 38 Mondowiess. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. . . . 21 Palestinian American Medical Association. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Palestinian Medical Relief Society . . 39 Unitarian Universalists . . . . . . . . . . 33 United Palestinian Appeal (UPA). . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover Zakat Foundation of America . . . . 11 Ziyad Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians will only embitter many more generations to come. Sara Mayer, Boulder, CO
CANADA’S COMPLICITY To The Free Press, Jan. 30, 2024 The Canadian government’s silence on the International Court of Justice’s ruling of Jan. 26 is deafening. In an almost unanimous ruling, the ICJ made a landmark statement reiterating many of the key points delivered by South Africa’s outstanding team of lawyers, conceding that what is happening in Gaza is a plausible genocide. The ICJ has made mandatory demands on the Israeli government to stop genocidal acts in Gaza. Rather than acknowledging and respecting the ICJ’s ruling and immediately pledging to stop selling arms to Israel, Canada chooses to stop funding UNRWA, the main lifeline for aid to the starving population of Gaza. Why? Because Israel has alleged that some of its workers participated in the Oct. 7 attack. These are unproven allegations, but UNRWA fired the accused workers in lieu of a proper investigation. This was apparently not enough for the U.S., Canada and the UK. These countries have chosen to punish the U.N. rather than admit that they are complicit in Israeli crimes. Meanwhile Pierre Poilievre [leader of the Conservative Party of Canada] describes the case that South Africa presented as “shameless and dishonest.” He is no doubt describing himself. Nothing can be farther from the truth. South Africa’s distinguished group of lawyers presented an incredible body of evidence with elegance and dignity, showing empathy for their fellow human beings. They delivered a stellar presentation by a team of researchers funded by a country which has nothing to gain in this fight. South Africa is a shining light for humanity amid this horror. Canada’s complicity will have a lasting negative impact on this country’s place in the world. Jennifer W. Rahman, M.D., Winnipeg, MB MARCH/APRIL 2024
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O• B • I • T • U • A • R • I • E • S By Delinda Hanley Dr. Ibrahim M. Oweiss, 92, professor emeritus at the School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University and one of the founding members of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, died on Nov. 27, 2023, in Bethesda, MD. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Oweiss taught economics at Georgetown University from 1967 until his retirement in 2009. He was proud to count future president Bill Clinton as one of his students. In his final years, he taught at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University in Qatar, which he helped to launch in 2005, recruiting faculty and staff in only three months. During a 2007 trip to Qatar’s Education City, we observed him in action teaching future leaders. His autobiography, A Tale of Two Cultures, was published in September 2011. A longtime friend, adviser and occasional columnist for the Washington Report, Dr. Oweiss was the subject of a personality piece we published in 1983, which noted that it was he who coined the word “petrodollar” and described how the Gulf could use the “petrodollar weapon” to improve U.S. policy in the Middle East. His “Newton-Oweiss” law explains the farreaching consequences of economics in sociology, history and political actions. During Georgetown’s memorial service on Dec. 10 it was clear that the energetic and enthusiastic Dr. Oweiss had profoundly shaped and inspired foreign students he’d mentored, making them a part of his family when their own was far away. Dr. Oweiss is survived by his wife of 48 years, Céline Lesuisse Oweiss, who taught French at Georgetown, his daughter, Yasmeen, and son, Kareem, who shared memories like, “How come 300 students hang on my every word and you don’t listen to a word I say?” and invited the standing-room only audience to join in and give their dad’s “signature wink.” John Pilger, 84, Australian journalist, scholar and documentary filmmaker died in London on Dec. 30, 2023. Based mainly in 72
Britain, he was also a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. His dedication to the causes of Indigenous people, from Australia to Palestine to Indonesia, were all reflected in documentaries, such as “Utopia,” “Palestine is Still the Issue,” “The New Rulers of the World,” “Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror,” “Stealing a Nation,” and many others, most of which are available to watch on his website <Johnpilger.com>. In his powerful remembrance column, Dr. Ramzy Baroud wrote: “Pilger brilliantly connects the dots of major global issues—social injustice, inequality, the so-called war on terror and more—demonstrating the powerful maxim that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’” In Pilger‘s 2009 Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech, he said, “We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable.” Pilger uncompromisingly defended free speech and remained a supporter of Julian Assange in his war against censorship. Margaret Ann Hanson, 83, Voice of America radio correspondent, died on March 19, 2023 in Washington, DC. She and her first
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
husband served in the first group of Peace Corps volunteers to go to Türkiye to teach English. She remained deeply connected to Türkiye, its people and fellow volunteers throughout her life. Hanson also lived in Yemen, and drove a Land Rover from London, UK to Sana’a, Yemen. After returning to the U.S., she worked as a teacher, a secretary for CARE International, and then ran her own language school before she was hired as the Voice of America’s oldest intern. She quickly rose to become a renowned VOA radio correspondent, covering major global events. She moved to New Delhi, India, and later to Jakarta, Indonesia, where she continued to write, publishing two mystery novels, Deadline Yemen and Deadline Istanbul. She also led a group of close female friends, the self-described “Turkish Delights,” on excursions all over the world. Fadel Abu Hein, a professor and psychologist at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University for more than 20 years, was killed by an Israeli sniper on Jan. 23, 2024 in Khan Yunis. In 2003, Dr. Abu Hein was arrested from his Al-Shuja‘iyya home in Gaza City by Israeli forces. After Israel killed three of his brothers and blew up their home, he was brutally interrogated and released. He was considered an expert in treating trauma and mental health conditions, especially in children in Gaza. In an interview with The Guardian in 2005, Dr. Abu Hein said that Palestinian children had become “indifferent to death” after enduring Israeli shooting, night raids and demolitions. Israel has killed at least 94 other Palestinian academics since Oct. 7. Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah, 86, the emir of Kuwait for the past three years, died Dec. 16, 2023. While his predecessor Sabah alAhmad al-Sabah was beloved for his diplomatic and peacemaking roles, Nawaf was remembered for his inaction as defense minister during Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. He focused on domestic issues, including the overhaul of Kuwait’s welfare system during his short tenure. ■ MARCH/APRIL 2024
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AET’s 2023 Choir of Angels
The following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2023 and Dec. 31, 2023 is making possible activities of the tax‐exempt AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52‐1460362) and the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Some Angels will help us co‐sponsor the next IsraelLobbyCon. Others are donating to our “Capital Building Fund,” which will help us expand the Middle East Books and More bookstore. We are deeply honored by your confidence and profoundly grateful for your generosity.
HUMMERS ($100 or more) Maher Abbas, Estero, FL Fahed Abu-Akel, Atlanta, GA Aly Abuzaakouk, Fairfax, VA Miriam Adams, Albuquerque, NM James Ahlstrom, Stirling, NJ Rashda Albibi, Panama City Beach, FL Nabeel Arafat, Urbandale, IA Robert Barber, Good Shephard Comm. Church, Fort Lauderdale, FL Essa & Najwah Bishara, Greensboro, NC Ann Bragdon, Woodstock, VT Kathleen Brewster, Arlington, VA Ouahib Chalbi, Eden Prairie, MN John Cornwall, Palm Springs, CA David Curtiss, New Orleans, LA Richard Davila, Costa Mesa, CA Gregory DeSylva, Rhinebeck, NY Raymond Doherty, Houston, TX Nile El Wardani, San Diego, CA Preston Enright, Denver, CO Nancy Fleischer, Sacramento, CA Michael Gillespie, Maxwell, IA Sam Gousen, Arlington, VA Doug Greene, Bowling Green, OH Marina Gutierrez, Kensington, CA
Dixiane Hallaj, Purcellville, VA Marilyn & Harold Jerry, Princeton, NJ Angelica Harter, North Branford, CT M. Hotchkiss, Portland, OR Janis Jibrin, Washington, DC Akram & Lubna Karam, Charlotte, NC Mazen Khalidi, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI Akbar Khan, Princeton, NJ Eugene Khorey, Homestead, PA Nabil Khoury, Bloomfield Hills, MI Edward Kuncar, Coral Gables, FL Edward Lesoon, Pittsburgh, PA Marilyn Levin, Ashland, OR Jonothan Logan, New York, NY Dr. Moosa Lunat, Stockton, CA* Erna Lund, Seattle, WA Mrs. Allen MacDonald, Saratoga Springs, NY Donald Maclay, Media, PA Lucinda Mahmoud, Oceanside, CA Martha Martin, Kahului, HI Gwendolyn McEwen, Bellingham, WA Bill McGrath, Northfield, MN John Mearsheimer, Chicago, IL Joseph Melita, Hilton Head Isl., SC Sara Najjar-Wilson, Reston, VA Stephen Naman, Atlanta, GA Mounzer Nasr, McLean, VA
Hasan Newash, Detroit, MI Mary Neznek, Washington, DC W. Eugene Notz, Charleston, SC Susan Nye, Watertown, MA Anne O’Leary, Arlington, VA Linda Pappas Funsch, Frederick, MD Edmond Parker, Chicago, IL Edward & Ann Peck, Chevy Chase, MD Barry Preisler, Albany, CA Marjorie Ransom, Washington, DC Bilal Rathur, Bloomfield Hills, MI Kenneth Reed, Bishop, CA Sean Roach, Washington, DC John Robinson, Somerville, MA Adele Roof, Charlottesville, VA Rose Foundation, Oakland, CA Amb. William Rugh, Hingham, MA Rafi Salem, Alamo, CA Ramzy& Janet Salem, Monterey Park, CA Judith Schuchmann, Sacramento, CA Zac Sidawi, Costa Mesa, CA Viola Stephan, Santa Barbara, CA Karl Striedieck, Port Matilda, PA Jerilyn Tabor, New York, NY Yusuf Tamimi, Hilo, HI Janice Terry & Donald Burke, Marietta, OH Thomas Trueblood, Chapel Hill, NC Letitia Ufford, Hanover, NH
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• Receive a charitable estate tax deduction & Leave a legacy for future generations. Bequests of any size are honored with membership in the American Educational Trust’s “Choirmasters,” named for angels whose foresight and dedication ensured the future of the Washington Report and Middle East Books and More. For more information visit www.wrmea.org/donate/bequests.pdf, contact us at circulation@wrmea.org, write: American Educational Trust, PO Box 292380 Kettering, OH 45429, or telephone our new toll-free circulation number 800-368-5788 • Fax: 202-265-4574. MARCH/APRIL 2024
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Jeanie Valentine, Houston, TX V. Vitolins, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI Raymond Younes, Oxnard, CA Fathi Yousef, Irvine, CA Mashood Yunus, Minneapolis, MN Mohammed Ziaullah, Montclair, CA
ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)
Ali Akbar, Oakland, CA George Aldridge, Bissen, Luxembourg Larry Cooper, Plymouth, MI## Ron & Sue Dudum, San Francisco, CA Theodore Hajjar, Venice, CA Susan Haragely, Livonia, MI Eyas Hattab, Louisville, KY Edwin Lindgren, Overland Park, KS Darrel Meyers, Burbank, CA Hertha Poje, New York, NY John & Peggy Prugh, Tucson, AZ Irmgard Scherer, Fairfax, VA Deborah Smith, Durham, NC William Stanley, Saluda, NC Raymond Totah, Fallbrook, CA William Walls, Arlington, VA John Whitbeck, Paris, France Lawrence Wilkerson, Falls Church, VA Dr. James Zogby, Washington, DC
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Michael Ameri, Calabasas, CA Majid Batterjee, McLean, VA James Bennett, Fayetteville, AR Andrew Findlay, Alexandria, VA Donald Frisco & Ivone Marvel, Wilmington, DE Raymond Gordon, Venice, FL Alfred Greve, Holmes, NY Wasif Hafeez, W. Bloomfield, MI
Hanna Family, Santa Ana, CA### Erin Hankir, Nepean, Ontario, Canada Delinda Hanley, Kensington, MD**, **** Brigitte Jaensch, Sacramento, CA Gloria Keller, Santa Rosa, CA Nidal Mahayni, Richmond, VA John McLees, Chicago, IL Audrey Olson, Saint Paul, MN Bassam Rammaha, Corona, CA Patricia Ryder-Christensen, Poulsbo, WA Betty Sams, Washington, DC Francis Sarguis, Santa Barbara, CA Lisa Schiltz, Houston, TX David Snider, Bolton, MA Mushtaq Syed, Santa Clara, CA
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CHOIRMASTERS ($5,000 or more) Fatimunnisa Begum, Jersey City, NJ Ida Harlene & George Buchanan Trust, Rockville, MD Clyde Farris, West Linn, OR**, # Goelet Foundation, New York, NY**** William Lightfoot, Vienna, VA Ralph Nader, Washington, DC Mary C. Norton, Austin, TX Benjamin Wade, Saratoga, CA * In Memory of Farhana (Lunat) Rana **In Memory of Dick & Donna Curtiss ***In Memory of Dr. Jack G. Shaheen ****In Memory of John Goelet #In Memory of Andy Killgore ##In Memory of Diane Rose Cooper ###In Memory of George Hanna
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AET’s 2024 Choir of Angels
The following are individuals, organizations, companies and foundations whose help between Jan. 1, 2024 and Jan. 27, 2024 is making possible activities of the tax‐exempt AET Library Endowment (federal ID #52‐1460362) and the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Some Angels will help us co‐sponsor the next IsraelLobbyCon. Others are donating to our “Capital Building Fund,” which will help us expand the Middle East Books and More bookstore. We are deeply honored by your confidence and profoundly grateful for your generosity.
HUMMERS ($100 or more)
ACCOMPANISTS ($250 or more)
TENORS & CONTRALTOS ($500 or more)
Hossam & Skina Fadel, Augusta, GA John Matthews, West Newton, MA W. Eugene, Notz, Charleston, SC
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BARITONES & MEZZO SOPRANOS ($1,000 or more) Forrest & Sandi Cioppa, Walnut Creek, CA
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American Educational Trust Washington Report on Middle East Affairs P.O. Box 53062 Washington, DC 20009
March/April 2024 Vol. XLIV, No. 2
While some kids in the West enjoy rock climbing in gyms and fitness centers, children in the Lahij province of Aden, Yemen travel on rocky mountain trails to reach their schools, on March 18, 2023. They endure dangerous treks in summer heat or winter cold amid Yemen’s 9‐year civil war. PHOTO BY ABDULBASIT QADIRI/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES